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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  takes up all the main data of Christ’s life, from the conception to the crucifixion. Justification is not a progressive process, but a single instantaneous act.1522 Faith, working by love, lays hold of this grace. Scarcely any teaching of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas arouses so much revolt in the Christian theology of this age as the teaching about the future estate of unbaptized children dying in infancy. These theologians agree in denying to them all hope of future bliss. They are detained in hell for the sin of Adam, being in no wise bound to Christ in His passion and death by the exercise of faith and love, as the baptized and the patriarchs of the Old Testament are. The sacrament of faith, that is, baptism, not being applied to them, they are forever lost. Baptism liberates from original sin, and without baptism there is no salvation.1523 The doctrine of the sacraments, as expounded by Thomas, is, in all particulars, the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Christ won grace. The Church imparts it. The sacraments are visible signs of invisible things, as Augustine defined them. The number is seven, corresponding to the seven cardinal virtues and the seven mortal sins. They are remedies for sin, and make for the perfecting of man in righteousness.1524 The efficacy lies in a virtue inherent in the sacrament itself, and is not conditioned by faith in the recipient. Three of the sacraments —baptism, confirmation, and ordination—have an indelible character. Every conceivable question pertaining to the sacraments is taken up by Thomas and solved. The treatment of baptism and the eucharist occupies no less than two hundred and fifty pages of Migne’s edition, IV. 600–852. Baptism, the original form of which was immersion, cleanses from original sin and incorporates into the body of Christ. Children of Jews and infidels are not to be baptized without the consent of their parents.1525 Ordination is indispensable to the existence of the Church. In the Lord’s Supper the glorified body of the Redeemer is wholly present essentially, but not quantitatively. The words of Christ, "This is my body" are susceptible of only one interpretation —the change of the elements into the veritable body and blood of Christ. The substance of the bread undergoes change. The dimensions of the bread, and its other accidents, remain. The whole body is in the bread, as the whole body is also in the wine.1526 Penance is efficacious to the removing of guilt incurred after baptism. Indulgences have efficacy for the dead as well as the living. Their dispensation belongs primarily to the pope, as the head of the Church. The fund of merit is the product chiefly of the superabounding merit of Christ, but also of the supererogatory works of the saints.1527 In regard to the Last Things, the fire of hell will be physical.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  'Tis too late, luckless one, 'tis too late, weep for your sins, suffer, and strive to find in the depths of the phantoms you worship, if any finding there is to be done, what the reverence you have shown them has caused you to lose." With these words, the cruel Roland leaps upon me and I am again forced to serve the unworthy pleasures of a monster I had such good reason to abhor; this time I thought he would strangle me; when his passions were satisfied, he caught up the bull's pizzle and with it smote me above a hundred blows all over my body, the while assuring me I was fortunate he lacked the time to do more. Chapter 37 "Very well," I replied, "very well, Madame, but let's spend a moment reasoning in terms of your own principles: what right have you to require that my conscience be as impregnable as yours when since childhood it has not been accustomed to vanquishing the same prejudices? By what title do you require that my mind, which is not constituted like your own, be able to adopt the same systems? You acknowledge sums of good and evil in Nature, you admit that, in consequence, there must be a certain quantity of beings who practice good and another group which devotes itself to evil; the course I elect is hence natural; therefore, how would you be able to demand that I take leave of the rules Nature prescribes to me ? You say you find happiness in the career you pursue; very well, Madame, why should it be that I do not also find it in the career I pursue? Do not suppose, furthermore, that the law's vigilance long leaves in peace him who violates its codes, you have just had a striking example of the contrary; of the fifteen scoundrels with whom I was living, fourteen perish ignominiously...." "And is that what you call a misfortune ?" Dubois asked. "But what does this ignominy mean to him who has principles no longer? When one has trespassed every frontier, when in our eyes honor is no more than a hallucination, reputation of perfect indifference, religion an illusion, death a total annihilation; is it then not the same thing, to die on the scaffold or in bed? There are two varieties of rascals in the world, Therese: the one a powerful fortune or prodigious influence shelters from this tragic end; the other one who is unable to avoid it when taken.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness. If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed only against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough. In order to be whole, we must recognize the despair oppression plants within each of us — that thin persistent voice that says our efforts are useless, it will never change, so why bother, accept it. And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction that lives and flourishes like a poison inside of us, unexamined until it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other. But we can put our finger down upon that loathing buried deep within each one of us and see who it encourages us to despise, and we can lessen its potency by the knowledge of our real connectedness, arcing across our differences. Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies’ work by destroying each other. What does it mean when an angry Black ballplayer — this happened in Illinois — curses a white heckler but pulls a knife on a Black one? What better way is there to police the streets of a minority community than to turn one generation against the other? Referring to Black lesbians and gay men, the student president at Howard University says, on the occasion of a Gay Student Charter on campus, “The Black community has nothing to do with such filth — we will have to abandon these people.” [italics mine] Abandon? Often without noticing, we absorb the racist belief that Black people are fitting targets for everybody’s anger. We are closest to each other, and it is easier to vent fury upon each other than upon our enemies. Of course, the young man at Howard was historically incorrect. As part of the Black community, he has a lot to do with “us.” Some of our finest writers, organizers, artists and scholars in the 60s as well as today, have been lesbian and gay, and history will bear me out.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  When the terrible denouement came, when the news broke that all the athletes were dead, their bodies strewn on a blood-spattered tarmac at the airport, it recalled the deaths of both Kennedys, and of Dr. King, and of the students at Kent State University, and of all the tens of thousands of boys in Vietnam. Ours was a difficult, death-drenched age, and at least once every day you were forced to ask yourself: What’s the point? When Bowerman returned I drove straight down to Eugene to see him. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a decade. He told me that he and Pre had been within a hair of the attack. In the first minutes, as the terrorists took control of the building, many Israeli athletes were able to flee, slipping out side doors, jumping out windows. One made his way to the next building over, where Bowerman and Pre were staying. Bowerman heard a knock, opened the door of his room, and found this man, a race walker, shivering with fear, babbling about masked gunmen. Bowerman pulled the man inside and phoned the U.S. consul. “Send the marines!” he shouted into the phone. They did. Marines quickly secured the building where Bowerman and the U.S. team were staying. For this “overreaction,” Bowerman was severely reprimanded by Olympic officials. He’d exceeded his authority, they said. In the heat of the crisis they made time to summon Bowerman to their headquarters. Thank goodness Jesse Owens, the hero of the last German Olympics, the man who “beat” Hitler, went with Bowerman and voiced his support for Bowerman’s actions. That forced the bureaucrats to back off. Bowerman and I sat and stared at the river for a long while, saying little. Then, his voice scratchy, Bowerman told me that those 1972 Olympics marked the low point of his life. I’d never heard him say a thing like that, and I’d never seen him look like that. Defeated. I couldn’t believe it. The cowards never started and the weak died along the way—that leaves us. Soon after that day Bowerman announced that he was retiring from coaching. A GRIM TIME. Skies were grayer than usual, and low. There was no fall. We just woke up and winter was upon us. The trees went overnight from full to bare. Rain fell without stop. At last, a needed boon. We got word that a few hours north, in Seattle, at the Rainier International Classic, a fiery Romanian tennis player was destroying every opponent in his path, and doing it in a brand-new pair of Nike Match Points. The Romanian was Ilie Nastase, aka “Nasty,” and every time he hit his patented overhead smash, every time he went up on his toes and stroked another unreturnable serve, the world was seeing our swoosh. We’d known for some time that athlete endorsements were important.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  What the government was demanding, $25 million, was very nearly our sales number for all of 1977. And even if we could somehow give them a year’s worth of revenue, we couldn’t continue to pay import duties that were 40 percent higher. So there was only one thing to do, I told Strasser with a sigh. “We’ll have to fight this with everything we’ve got.” I DON’T KNOW why this crisis hit me harder, mentally, than all the others. I tried to tell myself, over and over, We’ve been through bad times, we’ll get through this. But this one just felt different. I tried to talk to Penny about it, but she said I didn’t actually talk, I grunted and stared off. “Here comes the wall,” she’d say, exasperated, and a little frightened. I should have told her, That’s what men do when they fight. They put up walls. They pull up the drawbridge. They fill in the moat. But from behind my rising wall I didn’t know how. I lost the ability in 1977 to speak. It was either silence or rage with me. Late at night, after talking on the phone with Strasser, or Hayes, or Woodell, or my father, I couldn’t see any way out. I could only see myself folding up this business I’d worked so hard to build. So I’d erupt—at the telephone. Instead of hanging up, I’d slam the receiver down, then slam it down again, harder and harder, until it shattered. Several times I beat the living tar out of that telephone. After I’d done this three times, maybe four, I noticed the repairman from the telephone company eyeing me. He replaced the phone, checked to make sure there was a dial tone, and as he was packing up his tools he said very softly: “This is... really... immature.” I nodded. “You’re supposed to be a grown-up,” he said. I nodded again. If a phone repairman feels the need to chastise you, I told myself, your behavior probably needs modifying. I made promises to myself that day. I vowed that from then on I’d meditate, count backward, run twelve miles a night, whatever it took to hold it together. HOLDING IT TOGETHER wasn’t the same thing as being a good father. I’d always promised myself that I’d be a better father to my sons than my father had been to me —meaning I’d give them more explicit approval, more attention. But in late 1977, when I evaluated myself honestly, when I looked at how much time I was spending away from the boys, and how distant I was even when I was home, I gave myself low marks. Going strictly by the numbers, I could only say that I was 10 percent better than my father had been with me. At least I’m a better provider, I told myself. And at least I keep telling them their bedtime stories. Boston, April 1773.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 12 3/23/2011 how are you getting it. Who are you getting it from? Whose giving it to who? Um, and in that little office, some of that feeling-- Like, I’m pretty sure they had all sex with one another, but once again, in my kind of mismatched way, I hadn’t had sex with any of them. Um, (clicks tongue) they all- they all got infected, and they all died except one. 1:26:09 DANIEL (VO/ON) My partner, Steve, was an immunology researcher. We had been together for quite a while, probably about eight years. And all of a sudden, people were coming to him and asking him to explain what’s going on, and it was interesting. I mean, his self-esteem sort of turned around because he was a holder of very important information. He ended up working in Jay Levy’s lab, which was one of the most important AIDS research labs in the world. We got tested because Steve took my blood and brought it into Jay Levy’s lab. So we were like some of the first people who knew that we were actually positive, ‘cause the test wasn’t even available. When Steve came back from Jay Levy’s lab and told me that we were both HIV positive, it-- I ch- Uh, my- my life changed completely. Um, I- I had had five people working for me. Um, and I let them go, and uh, luckily, I had saved some money, and I just started doing sculpture. 1:27:27 PAUL (VO/ON) Here am I, the- the kid from San Jose, come up here. I’m now the vice president of some little gay Democratic club where maybe fifteen or twenty people show up. And suddenly, the community starts to die of these extraordinary, horrible diseases, and they want help. How do we, you know, how do we s- eh, keep them alive? How do we make sure they don’t die of starvation because they can’t cook? How do we-- And meanwhile, there’s all these attacks that are occurring. Meanwhile, there’s this tremendous debate within the community about, well, maybe these are all wrong decisions. Maybe we shouldn’t be sexually free. Maybe uh-- And all these other debates are occurring. But it’s occurring-- The leadership, such as it is, is guys like me, who are suddenly in this little group. We’re uh, forced to deal with this unbelievable circumstance of a community that, in addition to being hated and under attack, is now forced alone to try to figure out how to deal with this extraordinary m- medical disaster.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  While the epigraph pertains to Meridian's later relationship with Truman, a civil rights worker, it also encapsulates her relationship with Eddie; and, equally consequential, it bears striking semblance to Walker's own personal, sociopolitical, and sexual experiences. As a student at Spelman College, the historically black women's institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where Walker spent two years as a student, she was galvanized and inspired, in part, by another Spelmanite: Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the legendary civil rights activist and, by Walker's own account, the partial inspiration for the novel's eponymous character.24 Walker participated in the Atlanta (civil rights) movement before transferring after two years at Spelman, which she considered steeped in Victorian conservatism, to Sarah Lawrence College in New York in December 1963. Her studies commenced in January 1964, and in the fall of 1965 she learned that she was pregnant: the result of a summer abroad in Kenya and Uganda sponsored by the Experiment in International Living. Walker held the conviction that if she did not have an abortion, she would surely kill herself, asserting that "one or the other of us was not going to survive"; and so, "it was me or it."25 She succeeded in having an abortion that predated by eight years Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in 1973. Her experience is dramatized in the novel's account of Meridian's abortion after she becomes pregnant by Truman. Walker's experiences, then, inspire Meridian's character(ization). [image file=img/img0004.jpg] FIGURE 3.1 Excerpt from Alice Walker's Meridian, featured in Essence, July 1976. In terms of her relationship with Eddie, who marries her as he "had always promised he would `if something went wrong"' (61), Meridian does not fully acquiesce or subscribe to certain marital roles, particularly her sexual role as wife. Instead, she regulates, be it through elusion, the terms of their sex life. Now married and in a union that not only sanctions but legitimates sex, the very meaning of sex and its function changes for Meridian. Whereas it had operated previously as a conduit by which to secure protection from external male advances, now, as Eddie's wife, she no longer contends with such threats-as marriage marks her "unavailable" to men besides her husband. As such, she does not have to contend with male propositions. No longer needing sex as mediation and disinterested in it, Meridian implements certain regulatory practices to curtail and altogether elude sex with Eddie. In addition to "locking" her legs to the point Eddie must "fight to get [them] open," she also relies on seemingly legitimate excuses-grounded in community-based superstitions-to avoid sex: "she put the blame on any handy thing: her big stomach, the queasiness, the coming baby, [and] old wives' tales that forbade intercourse until three months after the baby was born" (65).

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  the pigeons: Can you believe it was only a year ago that I was surfing Waikiki? Eating water buffalo stew after an early morning hike in the Himalayas? Are the best moments of my life behind me? Was my trip around the world... my peak? The pigeons were less responsive than the statue at Wat Phra Kaew. This is how I spent 1963. Quizzing pigeons. Polishing my Valiant. Writing letters. Dear Carter, Did you ever leave Shangri-La? I’m an accountant now and giving some thought to blowing my brains out.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Both historically and cross-culturally, women have been defined by motherhood, an identity that has been largely imposed upon them, while no such impositions exist for the "childless man" or the absent/nonfather. What Meridian reacts to and ultimately resists is the vexed and gendered dynamics undergirding parenthood: while Eddie "fathers" a child he eventually abandons without contemplation, stigmatization, or derision, Meridian's responsibility as a woman-in adherence to racial/communal and larger social sanctions-is to fulfill her maternal role of mother as it has been socially constructed. Meridian, however, disrupts these ideals regarding motherhood and all it entails in that she neither possesses nor demonstrates any "maternal" affinities toward her son. Instead of responding to Eddie Jr. with the unconditional love or affection mothers are expected to exude, she rebels, conflating mothering with enslavement: It took everything she had to tend to the child, and she had to do it, her body prompted her not by her own desires, but by her son's cries. So this, she mumbled [...] is what slavery is like. Rebelling, she began to dream each night, just before her baby sent out his cries, of ways to murder him. [... He] did not feel like anything to her but a ball and chain. The thought of murdering her own child eventually frightened her. To suppress it she conceived, quite consciously, methods of killing herself. (69-70) Meridian does not experience the presumably inherent maternal bliss that society associates with motherhood. Rather, she views it and her son as burdens rather than sources of joy or fulfillment meriting idealization. In her evocation of slavery, particularly her equating motherhood with it, Meridian articulates feelings of entrapment and enclosure that society-in its romanticism of the mother role-very rarely, if ever, attaches to motherhood. Meridian perceives motherhood as a hindrance, an institution alienating her from and incarcerating her within herself, that corrupts her potential. As a panacea and contradictory to societal circumscriptions for mothers, she fantasizes about infanticide and suicide as escape mechanisms from what she considers thralldom: unwanted pregnancy and unexpected or compulsory motherhood. Meridian demystifies the largely narrow and myopic conceptualizations of the mother role, as well as ubiquitous mythologies governing the institution of motherhood.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Apparently, in a blackout, I talked to Steve about suicide. I wasn’t threatening to do it, just discussing its merits as a practical solution for the problems of life. I spent the remainder of the trip on good behavior. I used the bums to triangulate, inquiring about them often, giving them money. I thought that in the light of the bums I wouldn’t look so bad. I made up a game, “billionaire or bum,” in which I would ask Steve to place a bet on which one he thought a straggly-looking bohemian was. Apparently he was offended. She continued to invite me out there, especially once they got Dominic, but I always told her “soon.” I didn’t invite her to see my world. Now it was the bums, especially the kids who ran away out here, who kept Venice from becoming a total Google campus—at least so far. They graffitied the palm trees, made sure the drugs were still flowing. I felt drawn to them, particularly the younger ones, how they just let everything go. How they were able to do that. Palm trees in pristine locations depressed me. But with a little grit they were sexy against the setting sun. “Fuck me,” I said to the palm trees. When I was on Abbot Kinney, the long yuppie strip of contemporary blondewood-and-metal shops that cut across Venice diagonally, I felt out of place, more aligned with the homeless. Here were so many beautiful women: ombre-headed twentysomethings in boho-chic dresses, minimalist French women clad in black leather with angular jewelry, models even, who made me look at my toe hair and fuzzy legs in disgust. I had stopped shaving since the breakup. My hair, which had always been frizzy, was now even more coarse thanks to an infestation of gray. I was no longer even using henna. The cottage cheese on my hips stood out against my skinny legs. I had stopped giving a fuck. Looking at these women now, I thought, What if I could get really hot while I was here? What if I became the old me, or the very old me, or someone entirely new? When I get back home, maybe Jamie would want me again. What would I do? Maybe dye my hair auburn, start wearing lipstick again, wax my vagina into some sort of formation. I had always been more of a natural woman, and I assumed that Megan the scientist was low maintenance in the pubic realm, but how natural was too natural? I had gotten so natural that I was naturally dead. 8. There was one place on Abbot Kinney that gave me solace, and that was the Mystic Journeys bookstore. I looked in the window and saw the rows of rose quartz crystals.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Widely viewed as a disorder of the positive emotional system, depression smothers the sparks of positivity and positivity resonance like a heavy, wet blanket thrown over a waning campfire. It flattens people’s emotional experiences. Do you know the feeling of the lead apron the dental assistant drapes over you before an X-ray? Well, imagine all your clothes were made of that leaded material. How sluggish would that make you? How unmotivated to move? Your biggest wish when feeling depressed can be just to curl up alone in your bed. Sleep may be the only relief in sight. Now imagine caring for a newborn in this depressed state. Sure, you’d muster up the energy to change diapers and provide necessary feedings. But studies show that what a depressed caregiver does not do well is synchronize. Depression itself slows down your body movements and speech output. For the infant in your care, this translates into less behavioral contingency between the two of you, and less predictability. When synchrony does emerge, odds are it’s laced not with positivity, but negativity—be it anger or indifference. Depression, then, not only impairs your ability to experience and express your own positive emotions but also impairs your ability to connect with the preverbal being in your care. With the two key scaffolds of positivity and connection missing, positivity resonance—so badly needed for both of you—simply can’t emerge. The damages done to the developing child have been duly cataloged by developmental scientists. The list includes long-lasting deficits that can derail kids well into adolescence and beyond, first, in their use of symbols and other early forms of cognitive reasoning that undergird successful academic performance, and next, in their abilities to take other people’s perspectives and empathize, skills vital to developing supportive social relationships. More generally, behavioral synchrony between infant and caregiver sets the stage for children’s development of self-regulation, which gives them tools for controlling and channeling their emotions, attention, and behaviors, tools vital to success in all domains of life. The range of lifelong benefits that lovingly reared infants extract from the recurrent micro-moments of positivity resonance they share with attentive caregivers shines a spotlight on the immense value of these fleeting and subtle states. Although the typical springboards for the loving moments you share with intimates are surely different from the peekaboo games infants play with their caregivers, this painstaking infant research underscores that a deep or complex understanding of the other is hardly necessary for love. Any moment of positivity resonance that ripples through the brains and bodies of you and another can be health- and life-giving, regardless of whether you share history together. Studies of successful marriages also bear this out. Couples who regularly make time to do new and exciting things together—like hiking, skiing, dancing, or attending concerts and plays—have better- quality marriages.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But this would bring no liberation. In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus showed that the abolition of God required a lifelong and hopeless struggle that it was impossible to rationalize. In his passion for life and hatred of death, Sisyphus, king of ancient Corinth, had defied the gods, and his punishment was to spend eternity engaged in a futile task: each day he had to roll a boulder up a mountainside; but when he reached the summit, the rock rolled downhill, so the next day he had to begin all over again. This was an image of the absurdity of human life, from which even death offered no release. Can we be happy in the knowledge that we are defeated before we even begin? If we make a heroic effort to create our own meaning in the face of death and absurdity, Camus concludes that happiness is possible: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. 72 By the middle of the twentieth century, many found it impossible to imagine that getting rid of God would lead to a brave new world; there was no serene Enlightenment optimism in the rationality of human existence. Camus had embraced the state of unknowing. He did not know for certain that God did not exist; he simply chose to believe this. We have to live with our ignorance in a universe that is silent in the face of our questioning. Within a decade of Camus’ death, though, the world had drastically changed. There was a rebellion against the ethos of modernity; new forms of religiosity, a different kind of atheism, and, despite the fact that unknowing seemed built into our condition, a strident lust for certainty. Reason A t about the same time as P was writing his creation story, a handful of philosophers in the thriving Greek colony of Miletus on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor had begun to think about the cosmos in an entirely different way.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  As their faith ebbed, many Victorians sensed the void that it left behind. When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) looked into the hearts of his contemporaries, he found that God had already died, there, but as yet very few people were aware of this. 79 In The Gay Science (1882), he told the story of a madman who ran one morning into the marketplace, crying: “I seek God!” In mild amusement, the sophisticated bystanders asked him if God had run away or emigrated. “Where has God gone?” the madman demanded. “We have killed him—you and I! We are all his murderers!” 80 The astonishing progress of science had made God quite irrelevant; it had caused human beings to focus so intently on the physical world that they would soon be constitutionally unable to take God seriously. The death of God—the fact that the Christian God had become incredible—was “beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.” The tiny minority who were able to understand the implications of this unprecedented event were already finding that “some sun seems to have set and profound trust has been turned to doubt.” 81 By making “God” a purely notional truth attainable by the rational and scientific intellect, without ritual, prayer, or ethical commitment, men and women had killed it for themselves. Like the Jewish Marranos, Europeans were beginning to experience religion as tenuous, arbitrary, and lifeless. The madman longed to believe in God but he could not. The unthinkable had happened: everything that the symbol of God had pointed to— absolute goodness, beauty, order, peace, truthfulness, justice—was being slowly but surely eliminated from European culture. Morality would no longer be measured by reference to an ultimate value that transcended human interests but simply by the needs of the moment. For Marx the death of God had been a project—something to be achieved in the future; for Nietzsche it had already occurred: it was only a matter of time before “God” would cease to be a presence in the scientific civilization of the West. Unless a new absolute could be found to take its place, everything would become unhinged and relative: “What were we about when we uncoupled this earth from the sun?” the madman demanded. “Where is the earth moving to now? Are we falling continuously? And backwards and sideways and forwards in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as though through an infinite nothingness?” 82 Nietzsche was, of course, familiar with the philosophical and scientific arguments for the denial of God, but he did not bother to rehearse them. God had not died because of the critique of Feuerbach, Marx, Vogt, and Buchner. There had simply been a change of mood. Like the ancient Sky God, the remote modern God was retreating from the consciousness of his former worshippers. The century that had begun with a conviction of boundless possibility was giving way to a nameless dread.

• 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.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Jamey, who had left the room before Dean came in, walked in at the wrong time: “My God,” he says, “I was almost Raped in the powder-room.” But no one laughed. It was as if someone had coughed during the crucial moment of a drama. “Whats happened?” he said, and then he saw Dean and Lance staring tensely at each other. And Jamey squints his eyes victoriously. Dean marched past Lance, past the staring eyes—into the bedroom. Lance is behind him, gliding past the stares knifing him brutally, ready to repay him now for his beauty, for the anarchy of that beauty. Chick steps quickly before Lance, whispers frantically: “Lance!—dont go after him!— theyre watching you!” But Lance brushes him aside and follows Dean into the bedroom. The door closes. From behind that closed door come voices, alternately raised, lowered. Now the door of the bedroom swings open, and Dean walks out, his clothes thrown carelessly over his arm. Lance stands momentarily at the door. And now he will do what will delight all of you who have hated him for his unquestioned reign: Lance will follow Dean.... He catches up with him, pulls on the clothes draped over the youngman’s arms. The clothes spill on the floor: Lance’s façade crumbles before us. “Dean—dont—go—” he pleads. (And is he pleading as much for his life as for Dean? I wonder.) “I have to talk to you—come back into the bedroom—I—” The pressure of Lance’s hand noticeably becomes heavier on Dean’s shoulder. Dean jerks viciously away from him. And he lashes: “Dont touch me, you fuckin faggot!” And the door, slammed by Dean, refuses stubbornly to close—swings open, wide open, admitting the coming night. The whispering has not yet been unleashed. Lance must admit his fall—with a look, a word. He stands before the door, his back toward us, facing the night.... And what is he staring at beyond the door? Is he looking at the disappearing figure of Dean? Or is he staring past the youngman? Does the same ghost that had hovered that afternoon on the beach, that night on the cliff, loom now at that door?... Lance doesnt move. Perhaps he cant face the buzzing bees behind him yet. Or is he acknowledging at last the old, old man who has waited patiently for his revenge?... And in anticipation of the crushed look which will bring down the curtain on the reign of Lance O’Hara, Chick rushes crying into the next room; and Jamey sighs: “Well!’ and that sighed word really means: “At last!” Now Lance will turn to face you, and the look of defeat will confirm the news that the reign of Lance O’Hara is over—that the charmed life has ended.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And while the preachers dash out their damning messages, the winos storm Heaven on cheap wine; hungry-eyed scores with money (or merely with a place to offer the homeless youngmen they desire) gather about the head hunting the malehustlers and wondering will they get robbed if— ...Pickpockets station themselves strategically among the crowds as if listening in rapt attention to the Holy Messages. And male-hustlers (“fruithustlers”/“studhustlers”: the various names for the masculine young vagrants) like flitting birds move restlessly about the park—fugitive hustlers looking for lonely fruits to score from, anything from the legendary $20-up to a pad at night and breakfast in the morning and whatever you can clinch or clip.... And the heat in their holy cop uniforms, holy because of the Almighty Stick and the Almightier Vagrancy Law; the scattered junkies, the smalltime pushers, the teaheads, the sad panhandlers, the occasional lonely exiled nymphos haunting the entrance to the men’s head; more fruits with hungry eyes—the young ones searching for a mutual, unpaid-for partner; the tough teenage girls making it with the lost hustlers.... And—but mostly later at night, youll find, when the shadows will shelter them—queens in colorful shirt-blouses—dressed as much like women as The Law allows that particular moment—will dish each other like jealous bitchy women, commenting on the desirability or otherwise of the stray youngmen they may offer a place for the night. And they giggle constantly in pretended happiness. And on the benches along the inside ledges, the pensioned old men and women sit serenely daily in the sun like retired judges separated now stoically from the world they once judged.... All!—all amid the incongruous music of the Welkian-Lombardian school of corn, piped periodically from somewhere along the ledges! All amid the flowers!—the twin fountains which will gush rainbowcolored verypretty at night.... The world of Lonely-Outcast America squeezed into Pershing Square, of the Cities of Terrible Night, downtown now trapped in the City of Lost Angels.... And the trees hang over it all like some apathetic fate . 4 Destiny’s place is two ugly tight rooms with naileddown windowshades and a head. You climb two narrow stairways and then make your way through a maze of cramped halls lighted just enough by greasy lightbulbs to reveal the cobwebs and the dirt—long narrow corridors like in the movie-serial when we were kids: And the Dragon Lady put Terry and the Pirates in a narrow hallway and she punched a button and the walls kept coming closer... threatening to crrrrrrush! everyone to... death!! Miss Destiny opened the door and turned on the light. The light screamed in our pupiled eyes, transforming the cobwebs on the ceiling into long nooselike shadows. Darling Dolly Dane was curled up on a couch, and Lola and a seedy-looking soldier were carrying on on another—this is the kitchen but it has two bed-couches. Lola hollers in her ugly man’s voice turn the fucking lights off. “Put out thy own dam lights, as the stunning Desdemona said,” Miss Destiny answered.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The only person who wasn’t depressed about the Tailwind was Bowerman. In fact, its catastrophic debut helped pull him out of the slump in which he’d been mired since retiring. How he loved being able to tell me, to tell us all, “Told you so.” OUR FACTORIES IN Taiwan and Korea were humming along, and we opened new ones that year in Heckmondwike, England, and Ireland. Industry watchers pointed to our new factories, and our sales, and said we were unstoppable. Few imagined we were broke. Or that our head of marketing was wallowing in a depression. Or that our founder and president was sitting in a giant baseball mitt with a long face. The burnout spread around the office like mono. And while we were all burning out, our man in Washington was flaming out. Werschkul had done everything we’d asked of him. He’d buttonholed politicians. He’d petitioned, lobbied, pleaded our cause with passion, if not always with sanity. Day after day he’d run up and down the halls of Congress, handing out free pairs of Nikes. Swag, with a side of swoosh. (Knowing that representatives were legally bound to report gifts worth more than $35, Werschkul always included an invoice for $34.99.) But every pol told Werschkul the same thing. Give me something in writing, son, something I can study. Give me a breakdown of your case. So Werschkul spent months writing a breakdown—and in the process suffered a breakdown. What was supposed to be a summary, a brief, had ballooned into an exhaustive history, The Decline and Fall of the Nike Empire, which ran to hundreds of pages. It was longer than Proust, longer than Tolstoy, and not a fraction as readable. It even had a title. Without a shred of irony Werschkul called it: Werschkul on American Selling Price, Volume I. When you thought about it, when you really thought about it, what really scared you was that Volume I. I sent Strasser back east to rein in Werschkul, check him into a psych ward if necessary. Just calm the kid down, I said. That first night they went to a local pub in Georgetown for a cocktail or three, and at the end of the night Werschkul wasn’t any calmer. On the contrary. He got up on a table and delivered his stump speech to the patrons. He went full Patrick Henry. “Give me Nike or give me death!” The patrons were ready to vote for the latter. Strasser tried to coax Werschkul down off the chair, but Werschkul was just getting warmed up. “Don’t you people realize,” he shouted, “that freedom is on trial here? FREEDOM! Did you know that Hitler’s father was a customs inspector?” On the plus side, I think Werschkul scared Strasser straight. He seemed like the old Strasser when he returned and told me about Werschkul’s mental condition.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He marched out of my office and I immediately reached for the phone. I dialed our retail store in Los Angeles. Bork answered. “John, our old friend Kitami is coming to town! I’m sure he’ll come by your store! Hide the Nikes!” “Huh?” “He knows about Nike, but I told him it isn’t in stores!” “What you’re asking of me,” Bork said, “I don’t know.” He sounded frightened. And irritated. He didn’t want to do anything dishonest, he said. “I’m asking you to stash a few pairs of shoes,” I cried, then slammed down the phone. Sure enough, Kitami showed up that afternoon. He confronted Bork, badgered him with questions, shook him down like a cop with a shaky witness. Bork played dumb—or so he told me later. Kitami asked to use the bathroom. A ploy, of course. He knew the bathroom was somewhere in the back, and he needed an excuse to snoop back there. Bork didn’t see the ploy, or didn’t care to. Moments later Kitami was standing in the stockroom, under a bare lightbulb, glowering at hundreds of orange shoe boxes. Nike, Nike, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Bork phoned me after Kitami left. “Jig’s up,” he said. “What happened?” I asked. “Kitami forced his way into the stockroom—it’s over, Phil.” I hung up, slumped in my chair. “Well,” I said, out loud, to no one, “I guess we’re going to find out if we can exist without Tiger.” We found out something else, too. Soon after that day, Bork quit. Actually, I don’t remember if he quit or Woodell fired him. Either way, not long after that, we heard Bork had a new job. Working for Kitami. I SPENT DAYS and days staring into space, gazing out windows, waiting for Kitami to play his next card. I also watched a lot of TV. The nation, the world, was agog at the sudden opening of relations between the United States and China. President Nixon was in Beijing, shaking hands with Mao Zedong, an event nearly on a par with the moon landing. I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime, a U.S. president in the Forbidden City, touching the Great Wall. I thought of my time in Hong Kong. I’d been so close to China, and yet so far. I thought I’d never have another chance. But now I thought, One day? Maybe? Maybe. At last Kitami made his move. He returned to Oregon and asked for a meeting, at which he requested that Bowerman be present. To make that easier for Bowerman, I suggested Jaqua’s office down in Eugene as the site. When the day came, as we were all filing into the conference room, Jaqua grabbed my arm and whispered, “Whatever he says, you say nothing.” I nodded. On one side of the conference table were Jaqua, Bowerman, and I. On the other side were Kitami and his lawyer, a local guy, who didn’t look like he wanted to be there.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.” 44 This story can also be seen as an outward sign of the death of God announced by Nietzsche. How do we account for the great evil we see in a world supposedly created and governed by a benevolent deity? For the Jewish writer Richard Rubenstein this conception of God is no longer viable. Because Jews so narrowly escaped extermination, Rubenstein does not believe that they should jettison their religion, as this would cut them off from their past. But the nice, moral God of liberal Jews seems too anodyne and antiseptic: it ignores life’s inherent tragedy in the hope that things will improve. Instead, Rubenstein is drawn to the self-emptying God of Isaac Luria, who had not been able to control the world he had brought into being. The mystics had seen God as Nothingness; Auschwitz had revealed the abysmal emptiness of life, and the contemplation of Luria’s En Sof was a way of entering into the primal Nothingness from which we came and to which we all return. 45 The British theologian Louis Jacobs, however, believed that Luria’s impotent God could not give meaning to human existence. He preferred the classic solution that God is greater than human beings can conceive and that his ways are not our ways. God may be incomprehensible, but people have the option of putting their trust in this ineffable God and affirming a meaning, even in the midst of meaninglessness. Another Auschwitz story shows people doing precisely that. Even in the camps, some of the inmates continued to study the Torah and to observe the festivals, not in the hope of placating an angry deity but because they found, by experience, that these rituals helped them to endure the horror. One day a group of Jews decided to put God on trial. In the face of such inconceivable suffering, they found the conventional arguments utterly unconvincing. If God was omnipotent, he could have prevented the Shoah; if he could not stop it, he was impotent; and if he could have stopped it but chose not to, he was a monster. They condemned God to death. The presiding rabbi pronounced the verdict, then went on calmly to announce that it was time for the evening prayer. Ideas about God come and go, but prayer, the struggle to find meaning even in the darkest circumstances, must continue. The idea of God is merely a symbol of indescribable transcendence and has been interpreted in many different ways over the centuries.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Then she turned away again, and at last I slept.When I woke, it was daylight. I could hear the sounds of women coughing and spitting, and discussing, in low, peevish voices, the nights that they had passed, and the days they must now move on to. I lay with my eyes shut and my hands before my face: I didn’t want to look at them, or at any part of the squalid world I was now obliged to share with them. I thought of Zena, and the plan that I had put to her - I thought: It will be hard, it will be terribly hard; but Zena will keep me from the worst of the hardness. Without Zena, it would be hard indeed ...Then I took my hands from my face at last, and turned to gaze at the bed beside me; and it was empty. Zena was gone. The money was gone. She had risen at dawn, with her servant’s habits; and she had left me, slumbering, with nothing. Understanding it at last left me curiously blank: I think, I was too giddy already to be dazed any further, too wretched to descend to greater depths. I rose, and drew my frock from beneath the mattress - it was creased worse than ever - and buttoned it on. The drunkard in the neighbouring bed had spent a ha’penny on a bowl of tepid water, and she let me use it, after she had stood in it and washed herself down, to wipe the last remaining flakes of blood from my cheeks, and to flatten my hair. My face, when I gazed at it in the sliver of mirror that was glued to the wall, looked like a face of wax, that had been set too near a spirit-lamp. My feet, when I stepped on them, seemed to shriek: the shoes were ones I had used to wear as a renter, but either my feet had grown since then, or I had become too used to gentle leather; I had gained blisters in the walk to the Kilburn Road, and now the blisters began to rub raw and wet, and the stockings to fray.We were not allowed to linger past the morning in the bedroom of the lodging-house: at eleven o’clock a woman came, and chivvied us out with a broom. I walked a little way with the drunkard. When we parted, at the top of Maida Vale, she took out the smallest screw of tobacco, rolled two thread-like cigarettes, and gave me one. Tobacco, she said, was the best cure for a bruise.