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.

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• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I reached for the bottle, this time pouring my own. Frank wasn’t watching me; his eyes were closed now, his head leaning against the back of his chair, his big wrinkled face like a carving of stone. “You can’t blame Stan for what he is,” Frank said quietly. “He’s basically a good man. But he doesn’t know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can’t know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They’ve seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like. That’s why he can come over here and drink my whiskey and fall asleep in that chair you’re sitting in right now. Sleep like a baby. See, that’s something I can never do in his house. Never. Doesn’t matter how tired I get, I still have to watch myself. I have to be vigilant, for my own survival.” Frank opened his eyes. “What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not. So you might as well get used to it.” Frank closed his eyes again. His breathing slowed until he seemed to be asleep. I thought about waking him, then decided against it and walked back to the car. The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone. CHAPTER FIVE [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] THREE O’CLOCK IN THE morning. The moon-washed streets empty, the growl of a car picking up speed down a distant road. The revelers would be tucked away by now, paired off or alone, in deep, beer-heavy sleep, Hasan at his new lady’s place—don’t stay up, he had said with a wink. And now just the two of us to wait for the sunrise, me and Billie Holiday, her voice warbling through the darkened room, reaching toward me like a lover. I’m a fool … to want you. Such a fool … to want you.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  But by 1130 BCE, it was all over: the Hittite capital in Mitanni was in ruins, the Canaanite ports of Ugarit, Megiddo, and Hazor had been destroyed; and desperate, dispossessed peoples roamed through the region. It had taken Egypt over a century to relinquish its hold over its foreign provinces. The fact that Pharaoh Merneptah himself had been forced to fight a campaign in the highlands at the turn of the century suggests that even by this early date the Egyptian governors of the Canaanite city-states were no longer able to control the countryside and needed reinforcements from home. During this lengthy, turbulent process, one city-state after another collapsed. 9 There is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest that these cities were destroyed by a single conqueror. After the Egyptians had left, there may have been conflict between the city elites and the villages or rivalries among the urban nobility. But it was during this period of decline that settlements began to appear in the highlands, pioneered perhaps by refugees fleeing the chaos of the disintegrating cities. One of the very few ways in which peasants could act to better their lot was simply to decamp when circumstances became intolerable, leave their land, and become fiscal fugitives. 10 At a time of such political chaos, the Israelite peasants had a rare opportunity to make an exodus from these failing cities and establish an independent society, without fear of aristocratic retaliation. Advances in technology had only recently made it possible to settle in this difficult terrain, but by the early twelfth century, it seems that the highland villages already housed some eighty thousand people. If these settlers were indeed the first Israelites, some must have been native to Canaan, though they may have been joined by migrants from the south who brought Yahweh, a god of the Sinai region, with them. Others—notably the tribe of Joseph—may even have come from Egypt. But those Canaanites who had lived under Egyptian rule in the coastal city-states of Palestine would also have felt that in a very real sense they had “come out of Egypt.” The Bible acknowledges that Israel was made up of diverse peoples bound together in a covenant agreement, 11 and its epic story suggests that the early Israelites had made a principled decision to turn their backs on the oppressive agrarian state. Their houses in the highland villages were modest and uniform, and there were no palaces or public buildings: this seems to have been an egalitarian society that may have reverted to tribal organization to create a social alternative to the conventionally stratified state. 12 The final redaction of the Pentateuch occurred after the Israelites had suffered the destruction of their own kingdom by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE and had been deported to Babylonia.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn’t been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn’t make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate’s sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you’d met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. Nobody asked you whether your father was a fat-cat executive who cheated on his wife or some laid-off joe who slapped you around whenever he bothered to come home. You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection. And if the high didn’t solve whatever it was that was getting you down, it could at least help you laugh at the world’s ongoing folly and see through all the hypocrisy and bullshit and cheap moralism. That’s how it had seemed to me then, anyway. It had taken a couple of years before I saw how fates were beginning to play themselves out, the difference that color and money made after all, in who survived, how soft or hard the landing when you finally fell. Of course, either way, you needed some luck. That’s what Pablo had lacked, mostly, not having his driver’s license that day, a cop with nothing better to do than to check the trunk of his car. Or Bruce, not finding his way back from too many bad acid trips and winding up in a funny farm. Or Duke, not walking away from the car wreck…. I had tried to explain some of this to my mother once, the role of luck in the world, the spin of the wheel. It was at the start of my senior year in high school; she was back in Hawaii, her field work completed, and one day she had marched into my room, wanting to know the details of Pablo’s arrest. I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry, I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time. Except my mother hadn’t looked satisfied. She had just sat there, studying my eyes, her face as grim as a hearse.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The fourth-century Confucian philosopher Mencius could also only regard the min as born to be ruled: “There are those who use their minds and there are those who use their muscle. The former rule; the latter are ruled. Those who rule are supported by those who are ruled.”68 The min could never join the ruling class because they lacked “teaching” (jaio), which in China always implied a degree of force: the pictograph jaio showed a hand wielding a rod to discipline a child.69 Warfare too was a mode of instruction, essential to civilization. “To wage a punitive war,” Mencius wrote, “is to rectify.”70 Indeed, Mencius had even convinced himself that the masses yearned for such correction and that the barbarians vied with one another to be conquered by the Chinese.71 But it was never permissible to fight equals: “A punitive expedition is waged by one in authority against his subordinates. It is not for peers to punish one another by war.”72 The current interstate warfare between rulers of equal status, therefore, was perverse, illegal, and a form of tyranny. China desperately needed wise rulers like Yao and Shun, whose moral charisma could restore the Great Peace. “The appearance of a true King has never been longer overdue than today,” wrote Mencius; “and the people have never suffered more under tyrannical government than today.” If a militarily powerful state were to govern benevolently, “the people would rejoice as if they had been released from hanging by the heels.”73 Despite their convictions about equality, the Confucians were aristocrats who could not transcend the assumptions of the ruling class. In the writings of Mozi (c. 480–390), however, we hear the voice of the commoner. Mozi headed a brotherhood of 180 men, who dressed like peasants and craftsmen and traveled from one state to another, instructing rulers in the new military technology for defending a city when it was besieged by the enemy.74 Mozi was almost certainly an artisan, and he regarded the elaborate rituals of the nobility as a waste of time and money. But he too was convinced that ren was China’s only hope and emphasized the danger of political sympathy extending no further than one’s own kingdom even more strongly than Confucius. “Others must be regarded like the self,” he insisted. This “concern” (ai) must be “all-embracing and exclude nobody.”75 The only way to stop the Chinese from destroying one another was to persuade them to practice jian ai (“concern for everybody”). Instead of simply worrying about their own kingdom, Mozi urged each prince to “regard another’s state as your own”; for if rulers truly had such solicitous regard for one another, they would not go to war. Indeed, the root cause of all the “world’s calamities, dispossessions, resentments, and hatreds is lack of jian ai.”76

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  It was like a bad dream. I wandered down Broadway, imagining myself standing at the edge of the Lincoln Memorial and looking out over an empty pavilion, debris scattering in the wind. The movement had died years ago, shattered into a thousand fragments. Every path to change was well trodden, every strategy exhausted. And with each defeat, even those with the best of intentions could end up further and further removed from the struggles of those they purported to serve. Or just plain crazy. I suddenly realized that I was talking to myself in the middle of the street. People on their way home from work were cutting a small arc around me, and I thought I recognized a couple of Columbia classmates in the crowd, their suit jackets thrown over their shoulders, carefully avoiding my glance. I had all but given up on organizing when I received a call from Marty Kaufman. He explained that he’d started an organizing drive in Chicago and was looking to hire a trainee. He’d be in New York the following week and suggested that we meet at a coffee shop on Lexington. His appearance didn’t inspire much confidence. He was a white man of medium height wearing a rumpled suit over a pudgy frame. His face was heavy with two-day-old whiskers; behind a pair of thick, wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes seemed set in a perpetual squint. As he rose from the booth to shake my hand, he spilled some tea on his shirt. “So,” Marty said, dabbing the stain with a paper napkin. “Why does somebody from Hawaii want to be an organizer?” I sat down and told him a little bit about myself. “Hmmph.” He nodded, taking notes on a dog-eared legal pad. “You must be angry about something.” “What do you mean by that?” He shrugged. “I don’t know what exactly. But something. Don’t get me wrong—anger’s a requirement for the job. The only reason anybody decides to become an organizer. Well-adjusted people find more relaxing work.” He ordered more hot water and told me about himself. He was Jewish, in his late thirties, had been reared in New York. He had started organizing in the sixties with the student protests, and ended up staying with it for fifteen years. Farmers in Nebraska. Blacks in Philadelphia. Mexicans in Chicago. Now he was trying to pull urban blacks and suburban whites together around a plan to save manufacturing jobs in metropolitan Chicago. He needed somebody to work with him, he said. Somebody black.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  It started with small thoughts and fears—wondering whether I was behind on laundry, worrying about one of my kids—but it would quickly move to bigger fears. Is God real? I was spending my life for Him, and that doubt suggested a terrifying possibility: that I was wasting my life. In the dark, alone, in the quiet, I would push it away, but it seemed to yo-yo back into my brain, a nagging question I couldn’t shake. Ironically, my middle name is Faith, yet mine seemed to be eroding. Bible study teacher Beth Moore, a self-described “former pit-dweller,” has said that there are three kinds of pits: the kind we jump into, the kind we accidentally slip into, and the kind we’re thrown into.1 This pit was the latter. I had been thrown in. The question that haunted me during those sleepless nights was how on earth to get out. I’ve known people who at some point in their lives begin to doubt their career choices. Or they doubt whether they married the right person. Or they doubt their purpose in life. But what I was doubting went right to the core of who I was: I doubted the existence of God. Lying awake in my silent, too-dark bedroom each night, I doubted whether God was real. If He was, did He really see me? Did He really love me? Did He care? What was I thinking? Of course God cared. Didn’t He? The Weight of My Thoughts When had the faith I’d proclaimed with sincere fervor seeped right out of me? Who’d taken it? Where had it gone? Would I ever get it back? Suddenly, I was filled with doubt. Truthfully, it wasn’t sudden. It was slow, subtle, almost imperceptible, growing slightly each night as I lay there in the dark. My usually cheerful and optimistic demeanor was replaced by a lingering uneasiness. None of the methods I’d been taught over the course of my life about getting out of a funk were working. I was still working out and being productive at work and attending church. But my optimism was captured by a real, full-on war for my mind. I was being pulled under as these thoughts of doubt continued their relentless assault. Eventually what began in the night slipped into the daylight. More and more I wondered whether it was all true, but in the daytime plenty of distractions exist. Grabbing distractions—our brains are excellent at that. And when it came to the moments I needed faith, I would choose it. I’d lean hard on the decades of my story with God—until I started to notice my passion eroding. My spiraling thoughts were dragging me into exhaustion. Doubt steals hope. And with no hope, everything that matters doesn’t feel as important anymore. Have you ever been confronted with something so hard or heavy that it made you question everything you have believed?

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  My knock was answered by a pale little girl who stared hard at me while I enquired after the vacant rooms, then turned and called into the darkness behind her. After a second, a lady came; and she, too, looked me over. I thought then of how I must appear, in my expensive dress but hatless and gloveless, and with red eyes and a running nose. But I considered this image of myself rather listlessly, as if it did not much concern me; and the lady at last must have thought me harmless enough. She said her name was Mrs Best, that she had one room left for rent; that the charge was five shillings a week - or seven, with attendance; and that she liked her rent in advance. Would the terms suit me? I gave a quick, half-hearted show of calculation - I felt quite incapable of serious thought - then said that they would. The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and perfectly colourless; everything in it - the wallpaper, the carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth - having been rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of grey. There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an old man’s hand. The window faced the Market. It was all about as different from our house at Stamford Hill as it was possible for any room to be: that, at least, gave me a dreary kind of satisfaction and relief. All I really saw, however, was the bed - a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient bloodstain the size of a saucer - and the door. The bed, for all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully inviting. The door was solid, and had a key in it. I told Mrs Best therefore that I should like to take the room at once, and drew out the envelope that held my money. When she saw that, she sniffed - I think she took me for a gay girl. ‘It is only fair to tell you now,’ she said, ‘that the house I keep here is a tidy one; and I like my lodgers ditto. I have had trouble with single ladies in the past. I don’t care what you do or who you see outside my house; but one thing I won’t have, that’s men-friends in a single lady’s room ...’ I said that I would give her no trouble on that score.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I only stepped to the door, laid my bag upon the step, and knocked. Behind me, in the cut of the railway, a train rumbled and hissed. As it passed, the step on which I rested gave a shake.My knock was answered by a pale little girl who stared hard at me while I enquired after the vacant rooms, then turned and called into the darkness behind her. After a second, a lady came; and she, too, looked me over. I thought then of how I must appear, in my expensive dress but hatless and gloveless, and with red eyes and a running nose. But I considered this image of myself rather listlessly, as if it did not much concern me; and the lady at last must have thought me harmless enough. She said her name was Mrs Best, that she had one room left for rent; that the charge was five shillings a week - or seven, with attendance; and that she liked her rent in advance.Would the terms suit me? I gave a quick, half-hearted show of calculation - I felt quite incapable of serious thought - then said that they would.The room to which she led me was cramped and mean and perfectly colourless; everything in it - the wallpaper, the carpets, even the tiles beside the hearth - having been rubbed or bleached or grimed to some variety of grey. There was no gas, only two oil-lamps with cracked and sooty chimneys. Above the mantel there was one small looking-glass, as cloudy and as speckled as the back of an old man’s hand. The window faced the Market. It was all about as different from our house at Stamford Hill as it was possible for any room to be: that, at least, gave me a dreary kind of satisfaction and relief. All I really saw, however, was the bed - a horrible old down mattress, yellow at the edges and blackened in the middle with an ancient bloodstain the size of a saucer - and the door. The bed, for all its rankness, seemed at that moment wonderfully inviting. The door was solid, and had a key in it.I told Mrs Best therefore that I should like to take the room at once, and drew out the envelope that held my money. When she saw that, she sniffed - I think she took me for a gay girl. ‘It is only fair to tell you now,’ she said, ‘that the house I keep here is a tidy one; and I like my lodgers ditto.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  spall, ban} vb. bind, pledge (Ar. = bind; cf. Aram. ,בב‎ S32 travail; 920 pledge (but rare and dub.); esp. Moe cord, field, ַבְלָא‎ cord, 1] , חָבְלָא‎ pain, esp. of travail; Sab. חבל‎ border-territory, or field, Sab.Denkm. #849; Eth. hf: Zim®?*™, comp. As. nahbalu, rope, snare (but h= ¢))—Qal Pf. 2an Ez 18% Impf. יחבל‎ Dt 24% 2 ms. DONA Dt 24”; dann Bz "כ‎ Jibtza°: yan Jb 24°; sam Jb 24°; Imv. sf. aman ל‎ 207% 27°" Inj. abs. ban UB Dora» JA aa ban ID RE Ge pan Ze 117 (name of DPD) ; puss. pan Am 2%-- 1. bind, only in Dah, name of one of Zec.’s symbolic staves, Ze 117“ symbol. of fraternity. Esp. 2. bind by taking a pledge of, hold by a pledge, sq.acc. pers. Pr20 27% Jb 22°; take or hold in pledge, sq.ace.rei Ex 22”°(J E), Dt 24°" Jb 24%; sq. acc. cogn. ban Ez 18"; aN עַלעָנִי‎ Jb 24° prob. pregn. (v. Di) take pledges (getting power) over the poor; pan D733 Am 2° garments taken in pledge. | .בסנ‎ Impf. לו‎ ban Prigg? becometh pledged to rt (i.e. pledged to pay the penalty, opp. ppv), so Ew Hi De Now Str RV™ VB. >sub 11. 520 qv. Pi. 6 npan 286 ּ חכל Ct 8% הַבְּלַתֶ‎ Ct 8*; Imps “2M y 7;—rorithe; twist, hence travail; of mother Ct 8° (c. ace. of child; || IID’); metaph, of wicked man spy TaN) MEY TID "ץש ובאו‎

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said.‘A guinea is as fair a price as you will get, tonight.’ He sniffed again. ‘I daresay they are hot enough.’‘They ain’t hot at all,’ said Zena. ‘But the guinea will do; and if you’ll chuck in a couple of ladies’ niceties and a pair of hats with bows on, call it a pound.’The drawers and stockings he gave us were yellowed with age; the hats were terrible; and we were both, of course, still in need of stays. But Zena, at least, seemed satisfied with the deal. She pocketed the money, then led me to a baked-potato stall, and we had a potato each, and a cup of tea between us. The potatoes tasted of mud. The tea was really tinted water. But at the stall there was a brazier, and this warmed us.Zena, as I have said, seemed very changed since our expulsion from the house. She did not tremble - it was I who trembled now - and she had an air of wisdom and authority about her, a way of passing through the streets, as if she were quite at her ease upon them. I had been at ease upon them once; now, I think that, if she had let me hold her hand, I would have done it - as it was, I could only stumble at her heels, saying wretchedly, ‘What shall we do next, Zena?’ and ‘Oh, Zena, how cold it is!’ and even ‘What do you suppose they are doing now, Zena, at Felicity Place? Oh, can you believe that she has really cast me from her!’‘Miss,’ she said to me at last, ‘don’t take it the wrong way; but if you don’t shut up, I really shall be obliged to hit you, after all.’I said: ‘I’m sorry, Zena.’In the end she fell into conversation with a gay girl who had also come to stand beside the brazier; and from her she got the details of a lodging-house nearby, that was said to take people in, all through the night. It turned out to be a dreadful place, with one chamber for the women and another for the men; and everyone who slept there had a cough. Zena and I lay two in a bed - she keeping her dress on, for the sake of the warmth, but me still fretting over the creases in mine, and so placing it beneath the foot of the mattress in the hope that it would press flat overnight.We lay together very straight and stiff, our heads upon the same prickling bolster, but hers turned from mine and her eyes shut fast.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They walked together, and the world smiled to see it! They embraced on the street, and strangers were glad! While all the time I lived pale as a worm, cast out from pleasure, from comfort and ease.I rose from the bath, all heedless of the spilling water, and took up the photograph again; but this time I crushed it. I gave a cry, I paced the floor: but it was not with wretchedness that I paced, it was as if to try out new limbs, to feel my whole self shift and snap and tingle with life. I hauled open the window of my room, and leaned out into the dark - into the never-quite-dark of the London night, with its sounds and its scents that, for so long, I had been shut from. I thought, I will go out into the world again; I will go back into the city - they have kept me from it long enough!But oh! how terrible it was, making my way into the streets next morning - how busy I found them, how dirty and crowded and dazzling and loud! I had lived for a year and a half in London, and called it my own. But when I walked in it before, it was with Kitty or Walter; often, indeed, we had not walked at all, but taken carriages and cabs. Now, for all that I had borrowed a hat and a jacket of Mary’s to make me seemly, I felt as though I might as well be stumbling through Clerkenwell in no clothes at all. Part of it was my nervous fear that I would turn a corner and see a face I knew, a face to remind me of my old life, or - worst of all - Kitty’s face, tilted and smiling as she walked on Walter’s arm. This fear made me falter and flinch, and so I was jostled worse than ever, and had curses thrown at me. The curses seemed as sharp as nettle-stings, and set me trembling.Then again, I was stared at and called after - and twice or thrice seized and stroked and pinched - by men. This, too, had not happened in my old life; perhaps, indeed, if I had had a baby or a bundle on me now, and was walking purposefully or with my gaze fixed low, they might have let me pass untroubled. But, as I have said, I walked fitfully, blinking at the traffic about me; and such a girl, I suppose, is a kind of invitation to sport and dalliance ...The stares and the strokings affected me like the curses: they made me shake. I returned to Mrs Best’s and turned the key in my door; then I lay upon my rancid mattress and shivered and wept. I had thought myself brilliant with new life and promise, but the streets that I thought would welcome me had only cast me back into my former misery.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I told Auma she was being too hard on the Kenyan, that the same sort of thing happened in Djakarta or Mexico City—just an unfortunate matter of economics. But as we started back toward the apartment, I knew my words had done nothing to soothe her bitterness. I suspected that she was right: not all the tourists in Nairobi had come for the wildlife. Some came because Kenya, without shame, offered to re-create an age when the lives of whites in foreign lands rested comfortably on the backs of the darker races; an age of innocence before Kimathi and other angry young men in Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta started to lash out in street crime and revolution. In Kenya, a white man could still walk through Isak Dinesen’s home and imagine romance with a mysterious young baroness, or sip gin under the ceiling fans of the Lord Delamare Hotel and admire portraits of Hemingway smiling after a successful hunt, surrounded by grim-faced coolies. He could be served by a black man without fear or guilt, marvel at the exchange rate, and leave a generous tip; and if he felt a touch of indigestion at the sight of leprous beggars outside the hotel, he could always administer a ready tonic. Black rule has come, after all. This is their country. We’re only visitors. Did our waiter know that black rule had come? Did it mean anything to him? Maybe once, I thought to myself. He would be old enough to remember independence, the shouts of “Uhuru!” and the raising of new flags. But such memories may seem almost fantastic to him now, distant and naive. He’s learned that the same people who controlled the land before independence still control the same land, that he still cannot eat in the restaurants or stay in the hotels that the white man has built. He sees the money of the city swirling above his head, and the technology that spits out goods from its robot mouth. If he’s ambitious he will do his best to learn the white man’s language and use the white man’s machines, trying to make ends meet the same way the computer repairman in Newark or the bus driver back in Chicago does, with alternating spurts of enthusiasm or frustration but mostly with resignation. And if you say to him that he’s serving the interests of neocolonialism or some other such thing, he will reply that yes, he will serve if that is what’s required. It is the lucky ones who serve; the unlucky ones drift into the murky tide of hustles and odd jobs; many will drown.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I needed to visit the privy again, rather badly; I knew that it was dreadfully rude to lie abed like this, in a stranger’s parlour. Yet I felt as if I had been visited in the night by a surgeon, who had taken all my bones away and replaced them with bars of lead. I could no nothing at all - except lie ...Florence brought me my tea, and I drank it - then lay back again. I heard her moving about in the kitchen, washing the baby; then she returned and pulled the curtains open, meaningfully.‘It’s a quarter to eight, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘I have to take Cyril across the street. You will be up and dressed, now, won’t you, when I come back? You really will?’‘Oh, certainly,’ I said; yet when she reappeared, five minutes later, I had not budged an inch. She gazed at me, and shook her head. I gazed back at her.‘You know, don’t you, that you cannot stay here. I must go to work, and I must go now. If you keep me any longer, I shall be late.’ With that, she caught hold of the bottom of the blanket. But I caught hold of the top.‘I can’t do it,’ I said. ‘I must be sick, after all.’‘If you’re sick, you must go to a place where they will care for you properly!’‘I’m not that sick!’ I cried then. ‘But if I might only lie a little and get my strength... Go on to work, and I’ll let myself out, and be long gone by the time you get home. You may trust me in your house, you know. I shan’t take anything.’‘There’s little enough to take!’ she cried. Then she threw her end of the blanket at me, and put a hand to her brow. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘how my head aches!’ I looked at her, saying nothing. At last she seemed to force herself into a kind of calmness, and her voice grew stiff: ‘You must do as you said, I suppose, and let yourself out.’ She caught up her coat from the back of the door, and pulled it on. Then she took up her satchel, reached into it, and brought out a piece of paper and a coin. ‘I’ve made you a list,’ she said, ‘of hostels and houses you might try to find a bed in. The money’- it was a half-crown - ‘is from my brother. He asked me to tell you good-bye and good luck.’‘He’s a very kind man,’ I said.She shrugged, then buttoned up her coat, put her hat upon her head, and thrust a pin through it. The coat and the hat were the colour of mud.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Maria had set him there, with a dog’s head of papier mâché fixed to each side of his collar, to represent the hound that stood on guard at the gate of Hades.The marble floor of the hall, as I have said, we had scattered with roses: it was terribly hard to cross it, in bare feet, with my ringing head and my hand at my cheek. Before I had reached the staircase, I heard a step behind me, and a bang. I turned to see Zena there: Diana had sent her from the room in my wake, then had the door shut on us. She gazed at me, then came to put a hand upon my arm: ‘Oh, miss ...’And I - who had saved her from Diana’s wildness only, as it seemed to me then, to have that wildness turned upon myself — I shook her from me. ‘Don’t you touch me!’ I cried. Then I ran from her, to my own room, and closed the door. And sat there wretched, in the darkness, nursing my oozing cheek. Below me, after a few more minutes of silence, there came the sound of the piano; and then came laughter, and then shouts. They were carrying on their revelling, without me! I could not credit it. The sport with Zena, the insults, the blow and the bleeding nose - these seemed only to have made the marvellous party more gay and marvellous still.If only Diana had sent her guests home. If only I had placed my head beneath my pillow, and forgotten them. If only I had not grown miserable, and peevish, and vengeful, at the sound of their fun.If only Zena had not forgiven me my harshness in the hall — had not come creeping to my door, to ask me, was I very hurt, and was there anything that she could do, to comfort me. [image "020" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_020_r1.jpg] When I heard her knock, I flinched: I was sure it must be Diana, seeking me out to torture me or — perhaps, who knew? — to caress me. When I saw that it was Zena, I stared.‘Miss,’ she said. She had a candle in her hand, and its flame dipped and fluttered, sending shadows dancing crazily about the walls. ‘I couldn’t go up, knowing you was here all bruised and bleeding - and all, oh! all on my account!I sighed. ‘Come in,’ I said, ‘and close the door.’ And when she had done that, and stepped nearer to me, I put my head in my hands and groaned. ‘Oh Zena,’ I said, ‘what a night!

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  Water—that was it. For a full day we’d take the energy that usually went into thinking about food, preparing food, and eating food and direct it instead toward prayer. We’d pray for my confidence. We’d pray for my steadiness. We’d pray for my faith. It all was way too self-focused for me, but given the fear and pain I’d been dealing with, I was all in. In the days following Uganda, I must have replayed that comment of Ann’s a thousand times. “This isn’t who you are.” How could one simple declaration, one simple reminder, unlock the thick chains binding my mind and my heart for over a year? I thought about something the apostle Paul (known also by his Hebrew name, Saul) experienced upon coming to faith in Christ. He’d been a persecutor of Christians until he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, where he’d fallen blind. For three days, Acts 9 says, Saul ate nothing, drank nothing, and saw nothing. He had been directed by Jesus to go into the city and wait for further instruction. So the blind man, being led by his traveling companions, did as he was told. Eventually a disciple from Damascus named Ananias came and laid hands on Saul. And he said, “Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” “Immediately something like scales fell from [Saul’s] eyes, and he regained his sight.”4 Saul rose. Saul was baptized. Saul ate a meal. Saul gained strength. It is no exaggeration to say that upon hearing Ann’s words—“This isn’t who you are” —I could see something I hadn’t been able to see in months. Because alone in the dark the devil can tell you whatever the hell he wants. Now I wasn’t alone. I was fighting, and in Christ I was given the authority and power to win. Something like scales fell from my eyes, and finally I had vision again. I’d had an encounter with truth, and while “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned,” as Paul said, we have the mind of Christ.5 The spiritual person is led by truth. Even when that spiritual person has been in the dark for what seemed a very, very long time. I knew Ann had been right. The Moment of Change Interestingly, during those months of torment, everything about my public life had screamed of a sincere, rooted faith. I had proclaimed Jesus with unabated passion and seen the miracles of lives changed, all the while fighting to hold on to my faith.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I have had trouble with single ladies in the past. I don’t care what you do or who you see outside my house; but one thing I won’t have, that’s men-friends in a single lady’s room ...’I said that I would give her no trouble on that score. I must have been a queer sort of tenant for Mrs Best, in those first weeks after my flight from Stamford Hill. I paid my rent very promptly, but never went out. I received no visits, no letters or cards; kept stubbornly to my room, with the shutters closed fast - there to pace the creaking floor, or to mumble or to weep ...I think my fellow tenants thought me mad; perhaps I was mad. My life, however, seemed sensible enough to me then.For where else, in my misery, could I have run to? All my London friends - Mrs Dendy, Sims and Percy, Billy-Boy and Flora - were also Kitty’s friends. If I went to them, what would they say? They would only be glad, to know that Kitty and Walter were lovers at last! And if I went home, to Whitstable, what would they say? I had come away from there so recently, and been so proud; and it seemed as if they had all been promising I would be humbled from the very day I left them. It had been hard to live among them, wanting Kitty. How could I return to them, and take up my old habits, having lost her?So, though I imagined their letters arriving at Stamford Hill, and lying there unopened and unanswered; though I guessed that, recalling my archness, they would think that I had turned my back on them, and soon stop writing at all, I could not help it. If I remembered the things I had left behind me - my women’s clothes, and my wages; my letters and cards from fans and admirers; my old tin trunk with my initials on it - I remembered them dully, as if they were the pieces of some other person’s history. When I thought of Cinderella, and how I had broken my contract and let them down at the Britannia, I didn’t much care. I was known in my new home as ‘Miss Astley’. If my neighbours had ever seen Nan King upon the stage, they did not see her now, in me - indeed, I barely recognised her there myself. The costumes I had brought with me I found myself quite unable, after all, to gaze upon. I placed them beneath my bed, still in their bag, and left them there to moulder.No one came after me, for no one knew where I was. I was hidden, lost.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I remembered that she was an orphan, of sorts, and bit back my protests, and let her talk; but my silence seemed only to dampen her spirits the further.At last, when her cigarette was finished and thrown into the grate, she took a breath and said what I had been waiting for. ‘Nan, I have something to tell you - a piece of good news, and you must promise to be happy for me.’I couldn’t help myself. I had been longing to smile about it all afternoon, and now I laughed and said, ‘Oh Kitty, I know your news already!’ She seemed to frown then, so I went on quickly, ‘You mustn’t be cross with Tony, but he told me - just today.’‘Told you what?’‘That Tricky wants you to stay on, at the Palace; that you will be here till Christmas at least!’She looked at me rather strangely, then lowered her gaze and gave an awkward little laugh. ‘That’s not my news,’ she said. ‘And nobody knows it but me. Tricky does want me to stay on - but I’ve turned him down.’‘Turned him down?’ I stared at her. Still she would not catch my eye, but got to her feet, and crossed her arms over her waist.‘Do you remember the gentleman who called on me last night,’ she said, ‘ - Mr Bliss?’ I nodded. She hadn’t mentioned him today; and in all my fussing over her visit, I had forgotten to ask after him. Now she went on: ‘Mr Bliss is a manager - not a theatre manager, like Tricky, but a manager for artistes: an agent. He saw my turn and - oh, Nan!’ - she couldn’t help but be excited now - ‘he saw my turn and liked it so much, he has offered me a contract, at a music hall in London!’‘London!’ I could only echo her in disbelief. This was terrible beyond all words. Had she gone to Margate or Broadstairs, I might have visited her sometimes. If she went to London I would never see her again; she might just as well go to Africa, or to the moon.She went talking on, saying how Mr Bliss had friends at the London halls, and had promised her a season at them all; how he had said she was too good for the provincial stage; that she would find fame in the city, where all the big names worked, and all the money was... I hardly listened, but grew more and more miserable. At length I placed a hand before my eyes, and bowed my head, and she grew silent.‘You’re not happy for me, after all,’ she said quietly.‘I am,’ I said - my voice was thick - ‘but I am more unhappy, for myself.’There was a silence then, broken only by the sound of laughter and scraping chairs from the parlour below, and the shriek of gulls outside the open window.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  n.f. waste, desolation, ruin ;—‏ חַרְבָּה1 abs.’N Ly 26" + 15 t.+ Ez 385 (del. 6 Co) + Ez‏ pl. NAW yo? + 11 t.‏ ; חרבות G Co for‏ חרבה ”38 (Ez 38%, ef. supr.); estr. MII Is 5% 484 >;‏ Is 49"; MIN Ezr 9% THAW Is‏ סרבתיף sf,‏ Ch‏ 2 +109 ץ חִרְבותִיהֶם ;44° DINIW Is‏ ;51% (cf. 22 and infr.); (chiefly mid. and late‏ 34° Heb. Is? 8t.; Je rot. Ez 14 t—incel. 38% q.‏ del. Co);—1. waste, ruin, of cities of Israel‏ "58 (שממת ||( 497 ”44 Ly 26%-5)11( ; Judah Is‏ Je 25 277 447° Hz 5%; ruins of Jeru-‏ ,)792( salem Is 52° Dn 9”; also Ez 357; cf. Mal 1‘(c.‏ v® (¢d.); Egypt Ez 29°"‏ (בנה Ez 36” (c.‏ ,)72 in v"); ruin of‏ חרבות IA‏ ; שֶמֶמָה|| (in both‏ temple Ezr 9°; =ruined dwellings y 109”; cf.‏ בחר בתיהם 2Ch 34°, where rd. perh.O7N27N3 for‏ (v. 229 sub 111. ann); Je 22°; in gen. ruins (si‏ 1027 ץ כוס ח" ;"3 vera 1., v. Di; obj. of 733) Jb‏ an owl of a ruin. 2. of land: waste place‏ land‏ ; (ערבה ,7272 ||( 51° amid ruins Is 5", ef.‏ a desolation Je 7* 44” Ez 25" (Edom) Je 25"‏ Is 64° and Ez 33" (of Judah), ef. Ez 13%,‏ הח" השמָמות sim. of the prophets;‏ ְּשָעָלִים ma‏ Ez 36° (of Israel); of desolation of enemies of‏ ruins Is 61!‏ 016 == ח' עולם Isr. 9 (ny3? n);‏ elsewhere perpetual ruin, desolation‏ ; (בנה (c.‏ Ez 26”‏ ה' מעולם Je 25° 49% (cities of Bosra);‏ (sim. of Tyre). ,‏ vb. (Aram. and rare) attack,‏ [חרב] ו smite down (cf. Ar. == plunder, In. wage war with, vi. fight together, = war, battle; Syr. :כ‎ smite, slay)—Qal Ime. ms. חרב‎ 6 50” attack (+0708 Dn); mpl. 3397 vy obj. mp5, fig. of men of Babylon. Niph. Pf, 3 pl. המלבים‎ 127 (v. Hoph.) 2707 2 K 3% the kings have attacked one another, fought to- gether )| אִיש אֶַתדְרְעָהו‎ ID). | 1801. Inf. abs. 2K 3%,v. Niph., but rd. perhaps 2297), cf. Dr Ly 19”, note. , IN, *-9.7*9.ג‎ sword (as weapon; Aram. NB, ;חרב .וג ,₪;ב]‎ Ar. = dart, javelin) 352 th‏ חרב —abs. mn Gn 3%+; 320 Ex 175+; estr. mA Dt33"+; 86. חִרְבִּי‎ Ex 15* + 13 t.; J370 Gn 27 + 7.5 727018178 p17; טא חרבו‎ 22% + 24+ DIP Je 2" בב‎ DIN ש‎ 37" 44% pl. MIM Ts 21% + 5t.; estr. MIM Jos5?+4 2t.; sf. yniain Ez26% חרְבוְתֶם‎ Is2*4 5%.; חִרְבְתִיהֶם‎ Mi 4?4 2. —1. a. sword, as weapon of war Gn 48” (E), Ju 74 ד‎ ₪ 21°, and so in all periods ; two-edged (short) sword AEN WE Nia ח' וְלָה שני‎ Tu 3 cf. ח' פיות‎ Pr 5* (in sim.), ח' פיפיות‎ y140°; יז‎ also צגר ח'‎ edge of sword 89". b. gird on ה" הת") 454 שי 2539893 17 ₪ ז חָנַר sword=/NN‏

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  1 דדרבב‎ nm. wax, ור ונג‎ 1*+ 2t.; שדוג‎ 22% —always in simile, of melting; at theophany hills melt like wax 97°; like wax before fire Mi1*; wicked perish as wax melteth be- fore fire y 68°; heart melteth like wax זו‎ 22” (simile of fear, despair). On ד'‎ in ץ‎ 118% cf. Bae Che cit ne Tt n.pr.loc. a city of Judah ‘in the hill country,’ named just before Kiryath Sanna = Debir (=K. Sepher), Jos 15° & ‘Pevva, n.pr.loc. capital city of king‏ ְנַהבַהז Bela in Edom Gn 36”=1 Ch 1* ; identif. with‏ Tennib (perh.=Thenib, near the edge of the‏ Belka, ENE. from Heshbon, described by‏ Tristr ™"”") by Neubauer 4°41 20 cf, Tomkins‏ ib, 284‏ Be ש‎ PS sub .דין‎ YT, YT v. sub ידע‎ Seay (Oxy) v. sub רעה ,ידע‎ . ty וד‎ vb. go out, be extinguished (poet. & esp. Wisd. lit.) (Aram. עיף‎ gs) — Qal Pf. 3 mpl. 397 3437; Impf. WT Pr 20”, WT Jb 18°+4 4 t.;—go out, be extinguished, of lamp, always fig., lamp of wicked (i.e. pros- perity) אור רְשָעִים‎ Jb 18°, 1 2 Jb 189 21% Pr 13° 20% 24”; of hostile armies Is 43” (||323). Niph. Pf 3 pl. 33979 be made extinct, dried up, Jb 67 (of brooks). Pu. Pf 3 pl. דעכ‎ of assailants, be extinguished, quenched קוּצִים‎ UND ;8%זז ש‎ but rd. perh. בערו‎ with ₪ Bae & Che, v. Che*™™ דעת‎ +. sub .ידע‎ 200 ppt דפה‎ (Vv of foll., mng. unknown; NH דופי‎ is blemish, fault). 1 דפ‎ | n[m.] blemish, fault באמ‎ תִתְִּדִּפִי:‎ y 50” against thy mother’s son thou dost allege a fault תדבּר||)‎ 783). vb. beat, knock (Ar. (355 pour‏ [דפק]1 out, also drive (beasts))—Qal Perf. 3 mpl. sf.‏ DPD consec. Gn 33", but rd. rs. sf, DMPA‏ S Sam Di beat (in driving, drive severely‏ (6 Ct 5? abs. knocking (at‏ דופק or cruelly); Pé.‏ Jur”‏ מִתִִּפְקִים עלדהרלת door). Hithp. Pe,‏ beat violently (beat themselves tired) against‏ the door.‏ tmp n.pr.loc. first station of Isr. after‏ ps po מדבר‎ Nu 335 G ‘Padaxa; situation un- known, 01. views in Di. (On an interpret. of name froma stone ormetal Mafkat, Ta-Mafkat = Mafkat-district, v. Eb 8*™) v. sub pp.‏ דק ,דק of foll. cf. 035 a kind of palm ;‏ /) דקל NH 5p3, date-tree, palm, Aram. SP", S03).‏ n.pr.m.(loc.) a son of Joktan, i.e.‏ דקלְה+ an Arabian. territory or people Gn 107= 1Ch x”!; unknown, 61. Di Gn 10”, [PPT vb. crush, pulverise, thresh ;

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  He thinks he will leave. School life is unreal. All this is unreal. He has had enough. He can’t bear his colleagues. He can’t bear the boys any more either; en masse, he thinks, they’re horrible, like haddocks. He has to get out. He’ll live on his writing. His last book did well. He’ll write more. He’ll take a cottage in Scotland and spend his days fishing for salmon. Perhaps he’ll take the barmaid with him as his wife, the dark-eyed beauty he’s been courting for months, though he’s only in love with her emotionally, so far, and he hasn’t got anywhere, really, and those long hours sitting at the bar reduce him too often to hopeless drunkenness. He drinks too much. He has drunk too much, and he has been unhappy for a long time. But things are certain to change. The notebook he writes in is grey. He’s stuck a photograph of one of his grass snakes on the cover, and written ETC above it in ink. The snake is suitable because this is his dream diary, though there are other things in it too: scraps of writing, lesson plans, line drawings of sphinxes and clawed dragons rampant, and the occasional stab at self-analysis: 1) Necessity of excelling in order to be loved. 2) Failure to excel. 3) Why did I fail to excel? (Wrong attitude to what I was doing?) But mostly the notebook records his dreams. There are dreams of women with penises, of boxes of maidenheads like fingernail parings, of hooded cobras that rear up but turn out to be harmless. There are dreams that he has forgotten his gun but can’t borrow his friend’s, because his friend is giving it to his wife; that he is a spy on the Hitlerists, hiding in a hole with only his cigarette poking out; that he must hide his shotgun in the boot of his mother’s car to stop it being struck by lightning. And a dream in which his psychoanalyst is congratulating him on how good his dreams are.