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 187 of 267 · 20 per page

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  nothing; the pure community (and a community by birth and race) is all. Jerusalem and its wicked priests are the enemies; but then, so are all the Gentiles. In due course the Son of Light, led by the Essenes, will fight a war against the Sons of Darkness, who have compromised with the non-elect world; after the battle has been won, following the war-plan, a king will be restored to the throne and the purified Israel will live in the manner of Zadok. All the lucky ones, who will live for ever, will be Israelite by birth. The bad Jews and the Gentiles will all be dead. That is the plan for human history, devised by God, and shortly to be enacted. The Essenes had no matrix for a world-religion; far from it. Rather their monastery and their other cells, were incubators for extremists, Zealots, men of violence and enragés. The excavations at Qumran show that the monastery became a centre of resistance during the war of AD 66–70, and was stormed and burned by the Roman army. This annihilation marked the end of the Essenes as a separate sect – inevitably so, since they were exploring a stream of Jewish religious and political thought which led nowhere but to destruction. But the Essene monasteries, cells and city-groups were schools of more than Zealots. Their importance in the history of Christianity lies in the fact that they provided experimental centres – religious universities, indeed – which lay outside the mainstream of Jewish teaching as practised in Jerusalem. In their ultra-conformity, they were essentially nonconformist and antinomial. A man might enter an Essene community a pious, conformist Jew and emerge a Zealot; or he might go there for Zealous reasons and become a hermit. Or he might produce entirely novel ideas, or seize upon some aspect of Essene teaching and practice and develop it in a radically new direction. Thus the Essene movement was a powerful contribution to the fundamental instability of Judaism during this period. And the sense of crisis was deepening. It entered an acute phase after Judea was directly annexed by the Roman state and thus made liable to Roman fiscal procedures. These proved to be much less popular than the pro-Roman party had anticipated; it has been calculated that in first century Palestine, Roman and Jewish taxes together may have reached as much as 25 per cent (non-progressive) of incomes, in an economy which in some respects and in some areas was not far above the subsistence level. Palestine was thus soaked in politico-religious apocalypticism. Irredentist politics and religious extremism were inextricably mixed. All Palestinian Jews to some extent believed in a Messianic solution. There were, it is true, many different doctrines of

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  injuring anyone . . . that he was exalted in power but nevertheless remained poor in spirit.’ Gerald, at least as Odo presents him, was a conservative figure, somewhat harsh and severe in his views. He was furious when he discovered that people were using the water in which he washed to effect cures: ‘he said that if a serf did it he should be maimed, and if a free man, he should be reduced to servitude . . . people took his threats of mutilation seriously, knowing that he would not yield in the matter of punishment.’ So far as one can gather, Gerald did nothing more than treat his dependents justly, by the very imperfect standards of the times; that, in the tenth century, was sufficiently rare to promote a reputation for sanctity. It is a chilling little tale. Of course, the expectations of Dark Age man were not high. The Carolingian age itself was a comparatively brief episode of order between repeated breakdowns in society. The profound pessimism which Christians drew from Augustine’s writings itself seemed to mirror the uncertainties of life as they knew it. There grew up at this time a strong sense of the pointlessness of earthly life, which persisted long after horizons had widened – indeed, until the Renaissance. We find it particularly in endowment charters and documents justifying gifts of property to the church. In 1126, for instance, Stephen, Count of Boulogne, made over lands to Furness Abbey, ‘seeing that the bonds of this our age are breaking and falling daily into decay, seeing, again, how all the transitory pomp of this world, with the flowers and rosy chaplets and palms of flourishing kings, emperors, dukes and all rich men do wither from day to day; how, again, death casts them all into one mingled mass and hurries them swiftly to the grave ...’ And so forth. Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, asked why he founded monasteries when there were already so many, replied: ‘This whole world is a place of exile; and so long as we live in this life we are pilgrims of the Lord. Therefore we need spiritual stables and inns, and such resting-places as monasteries afford to pilgrims. Moreover, the end of all things is at hand, and the whole world is seated in wickedness; wherefore it is good to multiply monasteries for the sake of those who would flee from the world and save their souls.’ Despite these limitations, however, the attempt to create a totally Christian society was neither ignoble nor wholly unsuccessful. There is something enormously impressive, almost heroic, about the work of such men as Charlemagne and Alfred. The Christian theory of kingship had allotted them a giant’s role: they did their best to rise to it. Augustinian theory saw Christian mankind and its institutions as a

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  finally proclaimed, to an apathetic congregation in St Sophia, in 1452. On this occasion the papal promise of aid against the Turks was as insincere as the Greek acceptance of Rome’s doctrinal position. Six months later the city had fallen, and the eastern empire no longer existed. The great African Church radiating from Carthage was ultimately lost because of fatal divisions over the sacramental powers of bishops. Syria and the East, and much else, were lost because no compromise proved possible, or rather durable, over the definition of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Byzantium came to grief, and European Christianity remained divided, because East and West could not agree on an institutional means to resolve their comparatively trivial points of difference. Christ had founded a universalist Church which would be all things to all men. But it was also a Church with an intense vision, which bred adamantine certitudes. The more the vision was realized, the stronger the certitudes became, the less likely it would be that universality would be based on unity. The Augustinian idea of an authoritarian, compulsory and total Church was incompatible with the ecumenical spirit. Hence the attempt to give it substance in Carolingian times led inevitably to the split with the East. We shall now see how the Augustinian drive within the western Church proved too powerful for its unifying bonds, and how it smashed the Christian society into fragments.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Now I’m terrified I’ll always be sad and angry and the enormity of my emotions is eating me alive. I want my old life back,” I said, and with that, covered my face with my hands and let my body heave. “Laura, look at me,” she said, after a few minutes of letting me air my grief. “I need you to look at me.” I dropped my hands from my face and raised my eyes to meet hers, taking in her serene demeanor, her silver hair, her kind eyes. She leaned forward toward me, her eyes never straying from mine. “You are still you. You have not lost the essence of yourself. I see you. I see who you are. There’s no old life and new life, there’s just you. Don’t ever give anyone the power to take you away from yourself. You will always know who you are, no one can change that.” “OK,” I said, sniffling and holding her steady gaze. “What if I’m so lost that I can’t remember who I am or find myself in here? What if I’m actually lost forever?” “No, it’s not possible. Right here, Laura,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart and leaning forward even further in her seat, “you are here. Look inside. You’re too strong to have disappeared. Find yourself, embrace yourself, that’s the part no one can ever take from you, that will always be there for you. You know who you are.” Slowly, I nodded my head, as if she had just re-introduced me to myself. I was wounded, but I wasn’t dead. I had fallen, badly, and had convinced myself that I would never be the same again, but somewhere amidst the wreckage, whatever it was that made me a mother and a daughter and a friend, that was still there. It was possible that whatever had made me a wife was gone forever, but that was only a part of who I was. Its absence would not kill me: it would hurt, it would redefine parts of me, but it would not destroy me if I didn’t allow it to. * On Mother’s Day, I took a spin class that the instructor peppered with feel-good quotes about motherhood. I took a lot of spin classes so I was accustomed to these motivational tidbits and I was apathetic to them. Yes, I showed up, yes, I was doing my best and that was good enough, blah blah blah, but really, let’s be honest, I was here to fight age and gravity. “When life deals you a tough hand, don’t ask why. Don’t bother yourself with why me? Why not you? Because you can handle it, that’s why. You’ve hit hundreds of walls in your life, but you’re powerful and you’re resilient and you’ve got this, that’s why you. Because you can.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  emergence of the Staufen family. In total contrast to his Chronicle, he wrote in his preface: ‘I consider those who write at this time as in a certain manner blessed, because after the turbulence of the past, there has dawned the unheard calm of peace’. The progress of Otto of Freising’s historical and political thought indicates the importance men attached to the idea of harmony in the regulation of the Christian world. Nor is this surprising. If there was something wrong in the top direction of the total Christian society, how could the organism as a whole function? Must not breakdown impinge on every aspect of human life? That would be the prelude to total dissolution, the end of the world. But Otto was foolishly optimistic in assuming a new royal house could reconstruct world order on a permanent basis. The Staufen were immensely gifted. But they were human, and therefore vulnerable. Their flesh and blood was no match for the impersonal institution of the papacy. Accident, death, minorities: these fatal weaknesses of medieval secular power did not hold the same terrors for the elderly tiara-men. It is no accident that the contest began as the result of an imperial minority; or that the papacy pursued a personal vendetta against members of the Staufen clan, on at least two occasions stooping to plans for assassination. Frederick Barbarossa died by drowning, his even more magisterial son, Henry VI, of that relentless Mediterranean killer, dysentery. The popes were not always willing to wait for God to strike. Unspeakable ferocity was throughout the hallmark of these death-struggles between popes and emperors. In 1197 the Pope engaged in a conspiracy to murder Henry VI, in conjunction with his estranged wife Constance of Sicily; the plot was detected and some of its agents arrested: Henry forced Constance to watch their deaths – Jordanus of Sicily had a red-hot crown placed on his head and fixed to his skull with nails; others were burnt at the stake, flayed alive or covered in tar and ignited. But Henry VI himself died the same year; and the minority of his son, Frederick II, coincided with the pontificate of Innocent III, the most formidable of all the medieval lawyer-popes. He took the final steps in the subtle evolutionary process which stretched back to late Roman times, and progressed through Gelasius I, Nicholas I and Gregory VII. After Innocent III, the triumphalist pontification of Boniface VIII and others were mere hyperbole. Innocent III placed the papacy in the centre of the world’s motions. He quoted Nicholas I: ‘The world is an ecclesia .’ The Pope had not merely a right but an obligation to examine the person chosen as king

• From The Decameron (1353)

  All of this was so difficult for Nastagio to bear that he was frequently seized, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, with the longing to kill himself out of sheer despair. But, having stayed his hand, he would then decide that he must give her up altogether, or learn if possible to hate her as she hated him. All such resolutions were unavailing, however, for the more his hopes dwindled, the greater his love seemed to grow. As the young man persisted in wooing the girl and spending money like water, certain of his friends and relatives began to feel that he was in danger of exhausting both himself and his inheritance. They therefore implored and advised him to leave Ravenna and go to live for a while in some other place, with the object of curtailing both his wooing and his spending. Nastagio rejected this advice as often as it was offered, but they eventually pressed him so hard that he could not refuse them any longer, and agreed to do as they suggested. Having mustered an enormous baggage-train, as though he were intending to go to France or Spain or some other remote part of the world, he mounted his horse, rode forth from Ravenna with several of his friends, and repaired to a place which is known as Classe, some three miles distant from the city. Having sent for a number of tents and pavilions, he told his companions that this was where he intended to stay, and that they could all go back to Ravenna. So Nastagio pitched his camp in this place, and began to live in as fine and lordly a fashion as any man ever born, from time to time inviting various groups of friends to dine or breakfast with him, as had always been his custom.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  How does anyone stand out here? My newfound sexual prowess and confidence drain out of me, leaving nothing but a small dirty puddle in the gutter. The two ways I have for decades identified myself – as a loving wife and dedicated mother – are on shaky ground, while my brand new way of identifying myself as a desirable woman now simply vanishes, leaving me with the uncomfortable understanding that I can no longer rely on the self I thought I was. I register that my successes with numbers one through four were completely situational, that my small victories on the amateur fields led me to foolishly believe that I was ready for the big leagues; while I thought I had been gaining a deeper understanding of myself I was actually slowly losing what tenuous understanding of myself I did have. I picture myself almost twenty years ago, standing on the corner outside a bakery on the Upper West Side. I had been trying and failing to get pregnant and had fallen into a deep depression, despondent that friends around me blinked and got pregnant while I seemed destined for barrenness. A therapist suggested I do a simple activity that made me feel happy, and I told her my greatest happiness was found in cleaning my apartment on a Sunday morning after Michael left for work, then going to the bakery for three Italian bakery cookies and a cup of coffee, which I would slowly savor as I paged through piles of manuscripts for work. My therapist had told me to go do it then, to bring a simple pleasure back into my life, to remind myself what happiness felt like. Ever the diligent student, I had done as she instructed. I vacuumed our apartment, polished the dining and wooden end tables, scrubbed the ten linoleum squares that made up our kitchen and bathroom, and left the tiny apartment in its gleaming glory to walk around the corner to the bakery. Once I reached it though, I stopped outside the door leading inside, immobilized as I watched other customers stroll in and out. I could see the glass case of cookies through the window and I felt nothing so much as bafflement: this once made me happy? These crumbling, garishly colored cookies? Jockeying for a spot in line with all the couples pushing overloaded baby strollers? I desperately wanted to be a mother, I wanted to coo over a baby with Michael, saying she has my eyes but your smile, I wanted to know what it meant to feel a life growing inside of me – and these cookies were supposed to bring me some modicum of joy? I didn’t want the crumbs, I wanted the whole bakery.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And so, having found a buyer for his merchantman, he combined the proceeds with the money he had raised on his cargo, and purchased a light pirate-vessel, which he armed and fitted out, choosing only the equipment best suited for the ship’s purpose. He then applied himself to the systematic looting of other people’s property, especially that of the Turks. In his new role, he met with far more success than he had encountered in his trading activities. Within the space of about a year, he raided and seized so many Turkish ships that, quite apart from having regained what he had lost in trading, he discovered that he was considerably more than twice as wealthy as before. He thus had enough, he now realized, to avoid the risk of repeating his former mistake, and once he had persuaded himself to rest content with what he had, he made up his mind to call it a day and return home with the loot. Being wary of commercial ventures, he did not bother to invest his money, but simply steered a homeward course, at breakneck speed, in the tiny ship with which he had collected his spoils. He had come as far as the Archipelago, 3 when he found himself sailing one evening directly into the teeth of a southerly gale, and his frail craft was barely able to cope with the mountainous seas. So he put into a cove on the leeward side of a small island, with the intention of waiting for more favourable winds. He had not been there long, however, when two large Genoese carracks, 4 homeward-bound from Constantinople, struggled into the bay to escape the same storm from which Landolfo had taken shelter. The crews of the Genoese ships recognized Landolfo’s vessel, which they already knew from various rumours to be loaded with booty. And being by nature a rapacious, money-grubbing set of people, they blocked his way of escape and made their preparations for seizing the prize. First they put ashore a party of well-armed men with crossbows, who were strategically placed so that no one was able to leave Landolfo’s vessel without running into a barrage of arrows. Then they launched cutters, by means of which, aided by the current, they drew themselves towards Landolfo’s little ship. This they captured without losing a man, after a brief and half-hearted struggle, and they took her crew prisoner. Landolfo was left wearing nothing but a threadbare old doublet and taken aboard one of their ships, and after everything of value had been removed from his vessel, they sent it to the bottom. The next day, the wind changed quarter, and the two ships hoisted their sails and set a westerly course. For the whole of that day they made good progress, but in the evening a gale began to blow, producing very heavy seas and separating the two carracks from each other.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  his missionary career. What ensured the survival of Christianity was not the triumph of Paul in the field but the destruction of Jerusalem, and with it the Jewish-Christian faith. One of the many collateral reasons why Paul was anxious to disassociate Christ’s teaching from Judaism was that he wished to rescue it from Jewish irredentist politics. The Jewish political and military messiah meant nothing to Greeks and Romans. And to Paul Jesus had never been a messiah in this sense. That was not at all what Christianity was about. As a diaspora Jew, he had no quarrel with the Romans. On the contrary, he seems to have admired the Roman system and took advantage of it. His public claim to Roman citizenship was more than a physical escape from the justice of the law, now odious to him: it was a symbolic renunciation of Judaic status. Paul did not wish to see the Christian movement damaged and perhaps ruined by involvement with the (to him) irrelevant and hopeless quest for a Jewish state. Christ’s kingdom was not of this world! In this respect Paul saw eye to eye with Josephus: would that the two might have met, for Paul could have found a convert. But Paul was defeated and the Jewish-Christian Church of Jerusalem moved closer to Judaism, and – being a radical movement – to Zealotry and nationalism. A Slavonic translation of an early, uncensored, version of Josephus’s history suggests that the missing passages on Christianity emphasize the political aims of the Jewish-Christian resurrectionists in Judea. During the sixties the Jerusalem Church lost its Christian significance and the remains of its universalism as it became identified with the growing revolt against Rome. Zealots roamed the country districts. Religious terrorism increased in the towns. The crowded processions of the great feasts became the occasions for sudden murders which provoked riots and brutal retaliation. Law and order broke down and Rome was blamed for the economic distress which ensued. In Jerusalem a despairing proletariat turned against Rome, against a collaborationist sacerdotal aristocracy, and towards wonder-workers, patriotic brigands, and the sectaries. The final revolt and its repression lasted four years. It placed a great strain on the military and economic resources of the empire and Rome was correspondingly vengeful. The total of Jewish losses provided by Josephus add up to nearly one and a half million. The figure is unrealistic but it accurately mirrors the horrors of those years. There was a new, desperate diaspora. The Temple was destroyed and henceforth Judaism became the religion of the Talmud. The Jewish nation never recovered from the blow, though the final dispersion took place in the next century, when Jerusalem was razed and

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I was disgusted with myself, a simpleton who had been fooled by such a mundane pleasure in the past. Now, standing here on the sidewalk, I have that same feeling of bewilderment. I had thought happiness was still within my grasp and an emotion that I understood – men were mine for the taking just like those cookies had been, lined up on their trays, waiting to be chosen and packed up for home. But I don’t have the fire in me to compete with these strutting women who dominate the streets of my hometown. I suddenly feel used up and spit out, my eyes swollen from my meltdown in the car, my curly hair puffing up in the humidity, my skin coated in a toxic layer of acridness that I am certain will repel anyone who comes near me. I feel, finally, defeated. Slowly, I walk back home, letting Daisy know I can help her finish her errands if she wants and texting Hudson a long note that has been purged of the rage I felt just an hour ago. I tell him I love him unconditionally, am sorry I lost my temper and know we will get through this together. If I can only retrieve one part of my former self, it’ll be to mother the hell out of my kids – that’s the one job at which I absolutely will not allow myself to fail. To their credit, the kids get their emotions under control and our reunification spurs me along. Back upstate, every night leading up to her departure, I cook one of Daisy’s favorite meals and then excuse myself to wipe away a sudden onslaught of tears while the kids murmur to each other, “Is she seriously crying again?” Daisy and I have always been deeply connected to each other, and she is the child of mine who bursts through the door at the end of the day spilling out an endless series of stories. We are already down one loud and buoyant family member, and her departure will take us from what was just recently five inhabitants to three. The night before she is to leave, Hudson surprises me by packing Daisy’s astounding volume of belongings into the car trunk while I’m in the pool with Georgia. This help was a peace offering, and I stand dripping in my bathing suit while he proudly shows me that he got every last pillow and bin of food shoved in there. I have not had time to see #3 or #4, but both men still text me most days to say hi – a pleasant surprise given how sure I was that #3 had decided I came with too much baggage.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I could not imagine a time this misery would end, but Jessica had shared with me the quote “The only way out is through” and I repeated it to myself dozens of times a day, holding onto it like a lifeline. I was in deep right now, but I had to believe there would someday be an out. By the end of the day, I was emotionally spent, but the kids were in constant need of comforting and counseling so I would go from room to room listening or offering soothing words or accepting misplaced blame that had nowhere else to go until I was finally free to fall exhausted into my own bed. CHAPTER 14 Almost There The last winter weeks blurred together as spring break approached. Somehow I had managed to make it through each seemingly endless day, and now I decided to splurge on a room at a ski lodge in Vermont so Hudson could ski while I entertained Georgia at the indoor water park. I bought Daisy a plane ticket for her 18th birthday to visit her friend in California and give her a break from our turmoil. In the taxi on the way to the doctor’s office to have the cast removed from Hudson’s hand the week before our trip, a video clip came on, showing a young couple getting engaged on a quiet pier in the city. I scoffed noisily, disparaging the couple for their inability to see the inevitably grim and broken future that awaited them. I had been trying so hard to keep my anger in check, just days earlier weeping on the phone with Erika as I told her I was terrified that my once easy-going demeanor had been permanently expunged, wholly replaced by bitterness. I was not lacking self-awareness, and yet I could not seem to stop myself, resentment seeping out of my pores over the way in which I had been so egregiously wronged. Hudson eyed me mournfully, then looked out the window, away from me. I could accept that I was now openly dismissive of romance and commitment, but I was horrified to be passing that along to my kids, especially Daisy and Hudson, who were around the age I was when I first started to have sexual experiences.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  By Tuesday night, the kids were onto me. After I put Georgia to sleep, Daisy and Hudson approached me as a unified force, startling me with their intensity on getting to the truth. “Mom, where’s Dad?” Hudson asked, fixing his gray eyes on mine. “Upstate. Meetings,” I responded. “That doesn’t make sense,” Hudson said. “What’s really going on?” I took a deep breath and sat on the sofa. I had not planned this conversation, assuming I had at least a few days before I had to tackle it. “OK, guys, I’m sorry. I wanted to gather myself before talking to you. You know how Dad and I have been fighting a lot lately?” I asked. “No,” said Daisy, resolutely. “OK, well you know how we’ve been having a hard time with each other lately?” She shook her head again. “OK, well we have been, which I had thought was pretty noticeable and we decided that we need some time apart, temporarily, to try to fix things between us,” I said. “Are you getting divorced?” Hudson asked, panic rising in his voice. “No, but we’re separating. We need some time apart,” I said. What I wouldn’t have given to be airlifted out of this disaster zone, the agonized and confused expressions on my children’s faces. Was it too late to backpedal and assure them we would be in tiptop form in a week and not to worry? “One of you is having an affair,” said Daisy, suddenly and pointedly. “There is no other possible explanation for this. It’s too quick. Why isn’t Dad here talking to us too?” I had already decided that I wouldn’t lie to the older kids if they asked. I recalled having been cornered like this years earlier when the kids demanded to know if Michael and I were Santa, and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and Cupid and Petal, their special summer fairy, knowing that the second I confirmed it the sweet, innocent chapter of their childhoods that I had so assiduously protected would come to a swift conclusion. Now I was going to close yet another chapter with the information that their parents were not indomitable and that the safety of the family life they had known and relied on was gone, just like that. My silence spoke volumes before I could summon the courage to respond. “Oh my God, Mom. Just tell us,” Daisy cried. “It wasn’t me,” I said quietly. Mayhem ensued. If I had thought my life had already fallen apart, this moment proved to me that I was in fact just in the introductory phase. The panicked reactions of my kids were devastating on a whole new level than I had yet experienced.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  In the meantime, I have to clean the house and pack up to go home. Apparently, life just keeps going,” I said, “even when your heart feels like it might give out any second.” With that, I shuffled away in my slippers, pulling my bathrobe tightly around my body, which already, in just the past 36 hours, felt diminished. I paused before I passed out of his sight and turned back to look at him, saying, “One question I have to ask.” He looked at me so expectantly, even hopefully, that I almost felt bad for him. “Those flowers you sent me on Valentine’s Day ... Did you send the same ones to her too?” I asked. His face fell and I sucked in my breath, despondent, understanding the meaning of his silence. * We returned, as scheduled, to the city that evening. I huddled next to Georgia in the backseat, unable to bear any physical proximity to Michael. He lied and told the kids he had meetings upstate over the week so would be dropping us off and then driving right back up. The kids were confused, asking what kind of business meetings he could possibly have upstate. He offered a feeble explanation and when we got home packed a small suitcase to take with him. It was a bitterly cold February night, but warm and cozy in our beautiful new home, and the kids and I were talking in front of the fireplace when he came in to say goodbye. Watching my partner of 27 years wheel his suitcase out of our home and our family made me feel equal parts contempt and pity for him, but absolute agony for myself. I was witnessing one of the saddest moments of my life, representing our failures as individuals and a couple, and the end of my dream of having a loving, stable nuclear family. How was it possible that all the essentials he needed to exist could be zipped up in that one black carry-on size piece of luggage?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In the face of its onrush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing. Large quantities of refuse were cleared out of the city by officials specially appointed for the purpose, all sick persons were forbidden entry, and numerous instructions were issued for safeguarding the people’s health, but all to no avail. Nor were the countless petitions humbly directed to God by the pious, whether by means of formal processions or in all other ways, any less ineffectual. For in the early spring of the year we have mentioned, the plague began, in a terrifying and extraordinary manner, to make its disastrous effects apparent. It did not take the form it had assumed in the East, where if anyone bled from the nose it was an obvious portent of certain death. On the contrary, its earliest symptom, in men and women alike, was the appearance of certain swellings in the groin or the armpit, some of which were egg-shaped whilst others were roughly the size of the common apple. Sometimes the swellings were large, sometimes not so large, and they were referred to by the populace as gavòccioli. From the two areas already mentioned, this deadly gavòcciolo would begin to spread, and within a short time it would appear at random all over the body. Later on, the symptoms of the disease changed, and many people began to find dark blotches and bruises on their arms, thighs, and other parts of the body, sometimes large and few in number, at other times tiny and closely spaced. These, to anyone unfortunate enough to contract them, were just as infallible a sign that he would die as the gavòcciolo had been earlier, and as indeed it still was. Against these maladies, it seemed that all the advice of physicians and all the power of medicine were profitless and unavailing. Perhaps the nature of the illness was such that it allowed no remedy: or perhaps those people who were treating the illness (whose numbers had increased enormously because the ranks of the qualified were invaded by people, both men and women, who had never received any training in medicine), being ignorant of its causes, were not prescribing the appropriate cure. At all events, few of those who caught it ever recovered, and in most cases death occurred within three days from the appearance of the symptoms we have described, some people dying more rapidly than others, the majority without any fever or other complications.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He had meanwhile enlisted the aid of some trusted companions for his enterprise, and in the dead of night, having let them into the house, he led them to the place where Pericone and the woman were sleeping. Entering the room, they killed Pericone in his sleep and seized the lady, who woke up and started to cry, threatening her with death if she made any noise. Then, taking with them a considerable quantity of Pericone’s most precious possessions, they departed without being heard and made their way to the quayside, where Marato boarded the ship with the lady, leaving his companions to go their separate ways. The ship’s crew, taking advantage of a strong and favourable wind, cast off and sailed swiftly away. The lady was sorely distressed by this second catastrophe, coming as it did so soon after the first. But Marato, with the Heaven-sent assistance of Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand,7 began consoling her to such good effect that she soon returned his affection and forgot all about Pericone. She had hardly begun to feel settled, however, before Fortune, not content, it seemed, with her previous handiwork, engineered yet another calamity. As we have almost grown tired of repeating, the woman had the body of an angel and a temperament to match, and the two young masters of the vessel fell so violently in love with her that they could concentrate on nothing else except how best they might make themselves useful and agreeable to her, at the same time taking care not to let Marato see what they were up to. On discovering that they were both in love with the same woman, they talked the matter over in secret and agreed to make the lady’s conquest a mutual affair, as though love were capable of being shared out like merchandise or profits. For some time their plans were thwarted because they found that Marato kept a close watch on her. But one day, when the ship was sailing along like the wind and Marato was standing on the stern facing seaward without the least suspicion of their intentions, they both crept up on him, seized him quickly from behind, and hurled him into the sea. By the time anybody so much as noticed that Marato had fallen overboard, they had already sailed on for over a mile, and the lady, hearing what had happened and seeing no way of going to his rescue, began to fill the whole ship with the sounds of her latest affliction.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In the chronicles of the ancient Cypriots, then, we read that there once lived in the island of Cyprus a very noble gentleman, Aristippus by name, who was richer in worldly possessions than any other man in the country. And if Fortune had not presented him with one particular source of affliction, he would have accounted himself the happiest man alive. This consisted in the fact that one of his children, a youth of outstandingly handsome appearance and perfect physique, was to all intents and purposes an imbecile, whose case was regarded as hopeless. His true name was Galesus, but since the sum total of his tutor’s persistent efforts, his father’s cajolings and beatings, and all the ingenuity of various others, had failed to drum a scrap of learning or good manners into his head, on the contrary leaving him coarsely inarticulate and with the manners rather of a wild beast than a human being, he had earned himself the unflattering nickname of Cimon, which in their language has the same sort of meaning as ‘simpleton’ in ours. His hopeless condition was a matter of very grave concern to his father, who, despairing of any improvement and not wishing to have the source of his affliction constantly before him, ordered him to go and live with his farm-workers in the country. Cimon was only too pleased to obey, for to his way of thinking the customs and practices of country yokels were far more congenial than life in the city. So Cimon went away to the country, where one afternoon, whilst going about his rustic business on one of his father’s estates, with a stick on his shoulder, he chanced to enter a wood, renowned in those parts for its beauty, the trees of which were thickly leaved as it happened to be the month of May.2 As he was walking through the wood, guided as it were by Fortune, he came upon a clearing surrounded by very tall trees, in a corner of which there was a lovely cool fountain. Beside the fountain, lying asleep on the grass, he saw a most beautiful girl, attired in so flimsy a dress that scarcely an inch of her fair white body was concealed. From the waist downwards she was draped in a pure white quilt, no less diaphanous than the rest of her attire, and at her feet, also fast asleep, lay two women and a man, who were the young lady’s attendants.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It’s demeaning that I’m not allowed in to pick up or drop off Georgia,” he says. “Michael, you and I are on the same side. I too feel it’s critical that he let you back into his life. There’s no part of me that is prepared to continue being a single mother to a teenage boy. You had the whole summer coming and going from the same house and he never once acknowledged you, so proximity is not the issue. If I were you, I would write him a note every single day, let him know you’re thinking about him and miss him. He’s blocked you from his phone, so you’ll have to drop off handwritten notes. It’s a start. And maybe his guidance counselor will be able to reach him,” I say. “OK,” he says. “I’ll try.” We are both quiet then, watching the park come to life as strollers pass by with babies headed for the swings and dogs bound toward the dog park. “Michael,” I finally start. He looks up at me expectantly. “What are we doing?” “Right now?” he asks. “No, in general. We’ve been back in the city for weeks and neither of us has so much as mentioned couples’ therapy. We aren’t moving forward at all. What do you want?” I say. “I don’t really know, I’ve been waiting for a cue from you. You’re so angry all the time, it’s hard for me to understand what you want,” he says. This is the response I feared, confirming that the decision about our future has become a hot potato that we are going to hurl back and forth at each other, neither of us willing to be the one to hold it and let it burn. I wait for more, but he just looks at me. I will myself to say the words that have been trapped inside me for months; they’re so close to the surface, but getting them out feels like I will have to shatter a glass wall to do it. “OK, well,” I say, sucking in a deep gulp of air. “I guess what I want then is to agree that we’re done. I want a divorce. I don’t think there’s anything left to salvage between us.” The word “divorce” explodes between us, littering the space with shards of glass so that the path between us is no longer passable. “I think we could be together if we both wanted to. But if you don’t want to, then we can’t,” he says, his previously neutral tone now edged with anger and sadness. “Michael, I thought we would always be together. I can’t imagine what life without you is going to look like. I’m terrified.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  After is the dystopian alternative of that narrative, the pitiful remains left after the version I wanted was taken away from me. I need to get back to the before version of myself – the one who smiled easily and often, who embraced her life with purposefulness, a can-do attitude and joie de vivre – but without marriage, stability and a clear footpath I cannot figure out how to begin the journey to find her, if she in fact still exists. We arrive sandy and sunburnt back at our house in rural Upstate New York after a choppy ferry ride and a long drive home. Michael is there, ready to take over for a couple of days. I turn Georgia over to him and close myself in my – formerly our – bedroom. We are sharing our country home so that the kids don’t have to come and go; it’s awkward on a good day, a slap in the face on a bad one. Now it’s 6 p.m. on Saturday and I’m facing a long evening shut in my room so that I can avoid interacting with him. I can’t even bring myself to look straight at him yet, unable to have anything more than a halting conversation while my eyes frantically dart and roam so they’ll land anywhere but on him. It was here in this house, where we come to escape our hectic city lives two hours away and spend quality family time, that I discovered that Michael was not only sleeping with a woman I knew, but also that he had been contemplating divorcing me to be with her. Over the course of our many years together he and I had discussed the concept of infidelity and I had always maintained that I thought I had it in me to understand and forgive a one-night stand; anything more, no way. The exposition of his affair had brought me to my knees – he wasn’t just with her physically, he had fallen in love with her and in the process had fallen out of love with me and our life together. However, my “no way” is not so easy to sustain now that it’s a reality and I’m actually facing down the violation, not just the vague idea of what it might feel like.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I went into his Notes folder and in a bit of technological wizardry I didn’t know I was capable of, figured out there were notes in the virtual trash bin that could be opened. I found a letter he had written to someone to whom he had given a watch – not just any watch, but the first watch his father had ever given him. It was a loving letter but not proof of anything. It could have been a note to Hudson, though it was odd that neither of them had mentioned it to me. Stumped, I sat idly, staring at the phone screen, grimacing at my suspicious mind but also enormously relieved. I was about to turn his phone off and quietly return it to its spot on his nightstand when an app caught my eye – I had used WhatsApp to communicate with friends in other countries, but I didn’t know Michael used it. I clicked on it, but it was locked. I entered the passwords we usually used. Still locked. My stomach dropped as I instantly understood that what I was looking for was in here. I frantically entered passwords until an error message popped up saying I had tried too many times and was now locked out. This password was all that was standing between my bewilderment and the clues I needed to make sense of the state of my marriage. Was it portentous or a gift that I was locked out? I could go to sleep right now and in the morning ask Michael about it, or press a little harder about why he was so mad at me if I couldn’t bring myself to confess I had searched his phone. I could stop the ground from opening beneath me by setting the phone down now and calling it a night. I clicked on the OK button to close the app when it unexpectedly opened and I was in. I had been sitting with the phone for two hours. I noted the time, 11:30, and the last text Michael had sent was at 9pm to a female friend, saying he was going to sleep – and here are the words I read as my life as I had known it ceased to exist – he wished it was with her. I felt sheer panic as my finger scrolled back through their conversation. Words leapt off the screen at me in fragments I couldn’t piece together: “I can’t live my life in secret anymore”. “My mother is onto us”. “I stand to lose everything”. “Tell my wife”. “Soulmate”. “Love”. “Divorce”.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  earth. In his last, unfinished, work, he examined theodicy and the whole problem of evil. It was nonsense to suppose, he wrote, as the Pelagians did, that God was equitable in a human sense. His justice was as inscrutable as any other aspect of his nature. Human ideas of equity were like ‘dew in the desert’. Human suffering, deserved or not, occurred because God was angry. ‘This life, for mortals, is the wrath of God. The world is a small-scale Hell’. ‘This is the Catholic view: a view that can show a just God in so many pains and in such agonies of tiny babies.’ Man must simply learn to accept suffering and injustice. There was nothing he could do about either. Whereas Pelagius had portrayed the Christian as a grown-up man, a son no longer leaning on the Father, but capable of carrying out his commands by free will – emancipatus a deo, as he put it – Augustine saw the human race as helpless children. He constantly used the image of the suckling baby. Humanity was utterly dependent on God. The race was prostrate, and there was no possibility that it might raise itself by its own merits. That was the sin of pride – Satan’s sin. Mankind’s posture must be that of total humility. Its only hope lay in God’s grace. Augustine thus bridges the gap between the humanistic optimism of the classical world and the despondent passivity of the Middle Ages. The mentality he expressed was to become the dominant outlook of Christianity, and so to encompass the whole of European society for many centuries. The defeat of the Pelagians was to be an important landmark in this process. To what extent Augustine’s own Manichean pessimism was responsible for this dark coloration of Christian thought is hard to measure; certainly, if we contrast his philosophy with Paul’s, it can be seen that Augustine, not Pelagius, was the heresiarch – the greatest of all, in terms of his influence. But Christian society in Augustine’s age was already moving in this direction. By accepting the Constantinian State, the Church had embarked on the process of coming to terms with a world from which it had hitherto stood apart. It had postponed the construction of the perfect society until after the parousia. Augustine provided an ideology for this change of course, but he did not himself set it. In 398 a curious series of episodes took place in Constantinople. Following a high tide and a series of earth tremors, an official in the imperial army claimed that God had revealed to him that the city would be destroyed. In the second century, a man who spread such superstitions would have been prosecuted: this was precisely why the State had acted against Montanist bishops and ‘speakers with tongues’. In 398 there was a very different sequence of events. The official told his bishop, who