Disappointment

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 Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  (The Afro-American recently ran a series of articles on this subject, “The Education of a Genius,” by Mrs. Amarintha Work, who recorded in detail the development of her mulatto son, Craig.) Ebony and Our World are the two big magazines in the field, Ebony looking and sounding very much like Life, and Our World being the black man’s Look. Our World is a very strange, disorganized magazine indeed, sounding sometimes like a college newspaper and sometimes like a call to arms, but principally, like its more skillful brothers, devoted to the proposition that anything a white man can do a Negro can probably do better. Ebony digs feature articles out of such things as the “real” Lena Horne and Negro FBI agents, and it travels into the far corners of the earth for any news, however trivial, concerning any Negro or group of Negroes who are in any way unusual and/or newsworthy. The tone of both Ebony and Our World is affirmative; they cater to the “better class of Negro.” Ebony ’s November 1947 issue carried an editoral entitled “Time To Count Our Blessings,” which began by accusing Chester Himes (author of the novel Lonely Crusade ) of having a color psychosis, and went on to explain that there are Negro racists also who are just as blind and dangerous as Bilbo, which is incontestably true, and that, compared to the millions of starving Europeans, Negroes are sitting pretty—which comparison, I hazard, cannot possibly mean anything to any Negro who has not seen Europe. The editorial concluded that Negroes had come a long way and that “as patriotic Americans” it was time “we” stopped singing the blues and realized just how bright the future was. These cheering sentiments were flanked—or underscored, if you will—by a photograph on the opposite page of an aging Negro farm woman carrying home a bumper crop of onions. It apparently escaped the editors of Ebony that the very existence of their magazine, and its table of contents for any month, gave the lie to this effort to make the best of a bad bargain. The true raison d’être of the Negro press can be found in the letters-to-the-editor sections, where the truth about life among the rejected can be seen in print. It is the terrible dilemma of the Negro press that, having no other model, it models itself on the white press, attempting to emulate the same effortless, sophisticated tone—a tone its subject matter renders utterly unconvincing. It is simply impossible not to sing the blues, audibly or not, when the lives lived by Negroes are so inescapably harsh and stunted.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Poor Marianne!” said her brother to Colonel Brandon, in a low voice, as soon as he could secure his attention: “She has not such good health as her sister,—she is very nervous,—she has not Elinor’s constitution;—and one must allow that there is something very trying to a young woman who has been a beauty in the loss of her personal attractions. You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne was remarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Elinor. Now you see it is all gone.” CHAPTER XXXV. Elinor’s curiosity to see Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied. She had found in her every thing that could tend to make a farther connection between the families undesirable. She had seen enough of her pride, her meanness, and her determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend all the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, and retarded the marriage, of Edward and herself, had he been otherwise free; and she had seen almost enough to be thankful for her own sake, that one greater obstacle preserved her from suffering under any other of Mrs. Ferrars’s creation, preserved her from all dependence upon her caprice, or any solicitude for her good opinion. Or at least, if she did not bring herself quite to rejoice in Edward’s being fettered to Lucy, she determined, that had Lucy been more amiable, she ought to have rejoiced. She wondered that Lucy’s spirits could be so very much elevated by the civility of Mrs. Ferrars;—that her interest and her vanity should so very much blind her as to make the attention which seemed only paid her because she was not Elinor, appear a compliment to herself—or to allow her to derive encouragement from a preference only given her, because her real situation was unknown. But that it was so, had not only been declared by Lucy’s eyes at the time, but was declared over again the next morning more openly, for at her particular desire, Lady Middleton set her down in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing Elinor alone, to tell her how happy she was. The chance proved a lucky one, for a message from Mrs. Palmer soon after she arrived, carried Mrs. Jennings away. “My dear friend,” cried Lucy, as soon as they were by themselves, “I come to talk to you of my happiness. Could anything be so flattering as Mrs. Ferrars’s way of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable as she was! You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her; but the very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her behaviour as really should seem to say, she had quite took a fancy to me. Now was not it so? You saw it all; and was not you quite struck with it?” “She was certainly very civil to you.”

• From The City of God

  491 sociality has not gone away; it has only become warped into our various political passions. So much of this is actually captured in Augustine’s choice of the word “city” in his title and as his central operational concept of the whole work. And so we need to see that our politics is always, inescapably, a disappointed politics of heaven. And knowing that, for Augustine, is the first axiom of political wisdom. And so Augustine affirms the necessity of politics, and even its significance while refusing it direct salvific importance. In this way, we can say that Augustine offers no discrete and portable political philosophy at all, but only a political theology in which the activities and affections that we count as political appear to be a rather haphazard collection of phenomena scattered across the several dimensions of human life in the world as a whole—human life in which what we call politics has a small subsidiary part. Yes, humans must inhabit political communities in no small part out of a positive need, the mutuality of sustenance—although this could also be accomplished by families—but also out of a negative need, the need to suppress or expel the kinds of turbulent passions and people who make a social life so dangerous in a fallen world. And that is a tricky path to take, but Augustine saw no other viable route through worldly life. We must critique the religious propriety of patriotism, but we cannot deny the religious duty of public service. Christians must seek the welfare of the city where they live, and in so doing, they serve that city better than its more fanatically attached devotees, whatever those latter groups think. The 20 th -century political thinker Hannah Arendt, who knew Augustine’s work very well, once said that Augustine was the last man before modernity who knew what politics truly was, what it meant to be a citizen. And it’s true; one can get quite a political education from him. But that education would be for naught if you miss the way that such a political education can only be a secondary and inadvertent Lecture 23 Transcript—The City of God as a Single Book

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Perhaps,” said Marianne, “I may consider it with some surprise. Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet—he is not the kind of young man—there is something wanting—his figure is not striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, I am afraid, Mama, he has no real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor’s drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!” “He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time; but you would give him Cowper.” “Nay, Mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!—but we must allow for difference of taste. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke my heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must have all Edward’s virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm.” “Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in life to despair of such a happiness. Why should you be less fortunate than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your destiny be different from hers!” CHAPTER IV. “What a pity it is, Elinor,” said Marianne, “that Edward should have no taste for drawing.”

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  There was a bonging sound and a commotion. A disembodied male arm leapt up, twirled once in the air, and seized Dune by the wrist. Krock hurried in and grabbed the knife. Mischa set out the chopping block on a towel. “Dune, why did you do it?” said Shandee, full of disappointment and concern. “I forgot myself, I’m sorry,” said Dune, disengaging the viselike fingers of Dave’s arm. He turned to Krock and Mischa. “Now hear me out, guys. I play keyboards and guitar, and to be honest I’d rather lose my pecker for a little while than my ability to make music.” That statement got Krock’s attention. “Daggett,” he said into his communicator, “tell Lila that Dune has verbally agreed before witnesses to lose his pecker.” Lila was pacing up and down in front of her desk when Dune was led in. “All right, Mr. Pussyfinger,” she said firmly. “Just for that bit of defiance, we’re going to do a switcheroo on you.” She opened a door. In walked Marcela, the art critic, in a black slip. “Hello,” she said, with a nervous smile. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Chilli Goes to the Porndecahedron with Dave [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Chilli met Dave at eleven o’clock at the border crossing. She’d put on a little makeup and was wearing sandals and a sleeveless white shirt with black buttons. “Hi there,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry, I can’t go with you.” “Oh, pshaw, sure you can,” said Dave. “See the sights!” “Well, just a quick visit then.” They walked through a thicket and emerged at a clearing and climbed a low stone fence and walked a little farther. Dave pointed out the White Lake and the midway. They bought some falafels and ate them, while Dave told her about the darkrooms, where you talked in utter darkness. Chilli seemed to like that idea, so they checked into a darkroom and sat. “So how did everything go yesterday?” asked Dave in the dark. “Just fine,” Chilli said, enigmatically. “Now, tell me how this Porndecahedron works.” Dave said, “It’s a twelve-sided projection theater, like a dodecahedron. You’ve heard of buckyballs, right? It’s a big buckyball that you go inside of. There’s a cluster of seats in the middle, either single or tandem seats, and you go in and sit in a seat, buckled in for safety, because you’re suspended. You sit there and movies play on all the screens around you.” “Dirty movies.” “Well, you pick the playlist. Could be music videos, or a mashup from Brad Pitt movies, or handjobs, or beautiful Balinese dancers, or men having sex with each other—some women like to watch men having sex, it seems. Some people are into fetishes, so then there’ll be twelve screens of, say, men coming on women’s feet.” “Oh, wow,” said Chilli.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “Take a shower at my studio,” he said. He said he wouldn’t bother her or make any moves. He just wanted to paint her in her cuffed shorts, he said—but topless. “You know I’ve just had an orgasm so I’m obviously not going to wig out and attack you or something,” he said. Jessica said okay, and then she had a thought. There was a store across the street. “I’m just going to run in there and get some panties,” she said. “I hate getting out of the shower and putting on the same pair. Wait here.” She bought a three-pack of panties, and they walked four blocks over to his studio. He said that he’d been painting for fifteen years. He was a little older than she’d thought at first—maybe thirty-eight, fit and kind of craggy with a confused boyish look that she liked. Every so often as they walked he’d lean toward her and say something like, “This is the best day of my life. I’m so eager to get painting. I understand everything about beauty now, now that I’ve seen you.” His studio was on the third floor. There were ten chairs on one side of the room and a bunch of canvases leaning against the wall. She recognized several of the chairs from the paintings at the gallery. “I haven’t painted anyone in this chair,” he said. He positioned it on a bare stretch of floor with windowlight coming in. “I’ll just have a shower,” she said. “One thing,” he said. “When you come out, please don’t put your bra on. It leaves red marks on your skin.” “Okay,” she said. She went into his shower and washed using his soap and tore open the packet of panties and put one pair on. She didn’t put her bra on but just her shirt, buttoned once. He gestured her to a chair—white, covered in a nubby fabric. “Sit here and take off your shirt,” he said. Here she hesitated. “I warn you, I have tattoos,” she said. He froze. “You do?” “Yes. Is that a problem?” “No, of course not,” he said. But he was clearly lying. She could hear the unhappiness in his voice, and she could see it in his face. “You’re disappointed,” she said. “Admit it.” “It’s just that—I haven’t yet fully come to an understanding with tattoos. They tug at my eye, and I have to resist them. They distract me from the line.” “Well, I have a bunch, in various places,” said Jessica. “Sometimes now I kind of wish I didn’t, but I do.” “Do you really want them gone?” Bosco asked eagerly. “I know a way. You go to this tattoo-remover man, Hax. He has a suite at the House of Holes. He removes them completely, no ghostly traces.” “He must charge a lot of money.” “It won’t cost you a thing.” He handed Jessica a card with a hole punched in it. “Tell Lila that you want to see Hax.”

• From The City of God

  374 Books That Matter: The City of God reestablished through multitudinous forms of violence. It is a rigid singularity, imposed precariously only by force, and typically the force of imperium. In this way, the history of the world is a history of domination. „In the earthly city, human society is at war with itself because everyone desires some of the same things, and each is at war with herself or himself, because our desires are inconstant. Just as the earthly city has no true harmony or coherence, neither has it true originality. It has no novelty, but simply reiterates its own claim to be free of divine sponsorship. „In sum, Augustine says the earthly city’s day is already over. It goes on, but it lives entirely in the past. Its time is out of joint with the new eon that the Christian churches proclaim and pray to represent. It is already dead; it simply doesn’t know it. The Heavenly Jerusalem „In contrast to the parodic incoherence of the pagan political actors and philosophers who sought answers by human powers, the harmony and unity of the city of God is communicated by the prophetic conveyance of divine words, received gracefully by the community and obeyed as true nourishment. „None of this about the heavenly Jerusalem is actually true, and Augustine knows it. „The city of God on pilgrimage still lives in the morally and spiritually homogeneous era of the world and partakes in all ways in the tedium and sinfulness of humanity before the Second Coming. This fact severely complicates, some would say utterly obstructs, any hope for a stable or durable progress or sanctification of humans in the church during history. ›There will be fallbacks, failures, and all sorts of other disappointments.

• From The City of God

  409 Lecture 19 Transcript—Happiness and Politics (Book 19) earthly peace. They may not know that that is all they can attain, but it is. So while the agents of the earthly city work desperately, though futilely, to secure an ultimate peace in this fleeting age, the citizens of the heavenly city have to work alongside them and slipping into their slipstream, as it were, so long as they understand that their hopes cannot rest in the kind of flactual muck of this world, but must seek true peace through the use of temporal things and reside in this world as in captivity. This minimalist vision of what politics can accomplish rests on the conviction that the whole realm of human politics is in an important and inescapable way, tragic. By tragic here I mean that, in this sin- riddled world, individuals and groups will find their political hopes and expectations vexed by the very conditions that give rise to the need for politics itself. Politics is the art of compromise and cohesion where such compromise is required for the achievement of even provisional good. It is the creation of alliances about which parties will inevitably have second thoughts and resentments. It is the coordination of desires among different people with different desires, and whose individual desires are not even themselves collectively coherent or durably stable. It is an attempt to create conditions in which humans can flourish, but which at best only partially satisfy our ends. It is building a house on shifting foundations because no other foundations are available, and some habitation must be built. So understood, this vision of politics is not very inspiring; it makes for poor campaign slogans. But what it lacks in pizzazz, Augustine thinks, it more than makes up for in truthfulness. This vision of politics understands politics as always shadowed by the threat; not infrequently by the reality, of violence, a cure that at best does almost as much to harm as to help. Here some real idealism appears, but it is an idealism about what this politics lacks, not what it offers. For Augustine, on his reading of Genesis, God created humans with no need of political power—no lordship, no dominari—or domination—

• From The City of God

  396 Books That Matter: The City of God „All the routes to happiness that the philosophers and others have scouted out are shown to be inadequate. This world is filled with opportunities for destabilizing misery, and any attempt to avoid that misery would simply leave us more miserable still. The world for Christians is full of blessings, but no matter how cannily we seek them, none offers secure happiness. „The first four chapters of book 19 are a classic example of a well- established philosophical genre in the ancient world—calmly and lucidly laying out the possible options for the wise man to consider in the leisure of his study. „Augustine says this whole approach is built on the illusion that some technique or trick or gimmick that will help us acquire this happiness for ourselves. This idea is the root of our error. „Ironically, the very failure of our hopes reveals a clue to a better way. The ways in which our happiness is vexed, in their various modes of frustration, exhibit the depth and breadth of the universal longing for happiness. For Augustine, the true happiness must be the truest kind of peace. Once happiness is reimagined as peace, we have a useful concept for understanding any society. „In looking for happiness, we have been subtly misconceiving our desired end. We imagine we can achieve happiness by doing something. But peace is not something you do. Peace is something you are. ›Describing our end as peace challenges the presumption that our capacities for agency are a centrally useful tool in our quest for happiness. Perhaps our end is not something we can accomplish, but gift to us that we must at best receive. ›Christians thus face something of a quandary. The conditions of sinful worldly existence make our lives inhospitable sites for the cultivation of our true happiness, which is genuine peace.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She lived next to the church, and after school, that day, she invited me to her house for a cup of cocoa. I ran away without answering, dashing across the street and into the safety of my house. I ran up the stairs, my bookbag banging against my legs. I pulled out the key pinned to my uniform pocket and unlocked the door to our apartment. The house was warm and dark and empty and quiet. I did not stop running until I got to my room at the front of the house, where I flung my books and my coat in a corner and collapsed upon my convertible couch-bed, shrieking with fury and disappointment. Finally, in the privacy of my room, I could shed the tears that had been burning my eyes for two hours, and I wept and wept. I had wanted other things before that I had not gotten. So much so, that I had come to believe if I really wanted something badly enough, the very act of my wanting it was an assurance that I would not get it. Was this what had happened with the election? Had I wanted it too much? Was this what my mother was always talking about? Why she had been so angry? Because wanting meant I would not get? But somehow this felt different. This was the first time that I had wanted something so badly, the getting of which I was sure I could control. The election was supposed to have gone to the smartest girl in the class, and I was clearly the smartest. That was something I had done, on my own, that should have guaranteed me the election. The smartest, not the most popular. That was me. But it hadn’t happened. My mother had been right. I hadn’t won the election. My mother had been right. This thought hurt me almost as much as the loss of the election, and when I felt it fully I shrieked with renewed vigor. I luxuriated in my grief in the empty house in a way I could never have done if anyone were home. All the way up front and buried in my tears, kneeling with my face in the cushions of my couch, I did not hear the key in the lock, nor the main door open. The first thing I knew, there was my mother standing in the doorway of my room, a frown of concern in her voice. “What happened, what happened? What’s wrong with you? What’s this racket going on here?” I turned my wet face up to her from the couch. I wanted a little comfort in my pain, and getting up, I started moving toward her. “I lost the election, Mommy,” I cried, forgetting her warnings. “I’m the smartest girl in class, Sister Blanche says so, and they chose Ann Archdeacon instead!”

• From The City of God

  Chapter 16. --That If the Gods Had Really Possessed Any Regard for Righteousness, the Romans Should Have Received Good Laws from Them, Instead of Having to Borrow Them from Other Nations. Moreover, if the Romans had been able to receive a rule of life from their gods, they would not have borrowed Solon's laws from the Athenians, as they did some years after Rome was founded; and yet they did not keep them as they received them, but endeavored to improve and amend them. [110]Although Lycurgus pretended that he was authorized by Apollo to give laws to the Lacedemonians, the sensible Romans did not choose to believe this, and were not induced to borrow laws from Sparta. Numa Pompilius, who succeeded Romulus in the kingdom, is said to have framed some laws, which, however, were not sufficient for the regulation of civic affairs. Among these regulations were many pertaining to religious observances, and yet he is not reported to have received even these from the gods. With respect, then, to moral evils, evils of life and conduct,--evils which are so mighty, that, according to the wisest pagans, [111] by them states are ruined while their cities stand uninjured,--their gods made not the smallest provision for preserving their worshippers from these evils, but, on the contrary, took special pains to increase them, as we have previously endeavored to prove. [110] In the year a. u. 299, three ambassadors were sent from Rome to Athens to copy Solon's laws, and acquire information about the institutions of Greece. On their return the Decemviri were appointed to draw up a code; and finally, after some tragic interruptions, the celebrated twelve tables were accepted as the fundamental statutes of Roman law (fons universi publici privatique juris). These were graven on brass, and hung up for public information. Livy, iii. 31-34. [111] Possibly he refers to Plautus' Persa, iv. 4. 11-14.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “Gone,” said Jessica. “But so are my feelings for the artist, I’m afraid. He didn’t want to paint me the way I really looked, and that bothers me. I really want to see more of Hax.” “Well, that’s unfortunate, because Bosco paid for your tattoo removal by having a voluntary head detachment.” “That’s not good.” “He reveres you, but his head is, for the moment, physically separated from his body.” “Oh, dear,” said Jessica. “How awful for him.” [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Wade Presses the Sex Now Button and Koizumi Visits [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Wade woke up in his hotel room and pressed W, for woman, on the Sex Now button of his remote control. Then he dozed off. About ten minutes later, he heard the door open—the woman had a keycard, he supposed. He heard her slip off her slippers and her bathrobe in the dark and get into bed next to him. He could tell from the way she moved in the bed that she was naked. “Hi. Wow, that was fast,” he said. “Hello, my name is Koizumi. I’m a sculptor. I am also a collector of wet-dream memories. Do you have a wet-dream memory for me to collect?” “I’m sorry, I can’t remember. I had only a few, and it was a long time ago.” “Try to remember,” said Koizumi. “You will remember if you try.” Wade shifted so that he was lying on his back, his arms on the blanket. He breathed, thinking. “Okay, I remember one. A woman looked at me. I didn’t know her. She was sitting under a red beach umbrella and wearing a black bathing suit. Nobody else was around. She held out her arms and I asked, ‘Me?’ She nodded. She liked me. She understood me. She wanted me. I walked toward her and knelt in the warm sand, and I put my arms around her, and then I felt this gulping overflowing fizzing of sexual goodness, and I woke up, and I discovered that I had a dab of something in my underpants. I went around for a week thinking, Wow, I’ve had a wet dream. It was great because it was a dream in which something real really happens. I didn’t tell anyone. That’s it. Not very detailed, I’m sorry.” “Thank you,” said Koizumi. “I will let you feel my breasts now.” “Okay, great. Thanks.” Wade felt her breasts. “I’m sorry they are quite small,” Koizumi said. “Nonsense, they’re exquisite, and you know what the Be Good Tanyas say. The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.’ You know the Be Good Tanyas, right?” “Yes, they’re Canadian. I’m Canadian Japanese. I believe in supporting Canadian singers.” “Makes sense,” said Wade. “I believe in Canadian art. Also I believe in men who have quite big penises.” “Do they have to be Canadian men?”

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “Gone,” said Jessica. “But so are my feelings for the artist, I’m afraid. He didn’t want to paint me the way I really looked, and that bothers me. I really want to see more of Hax.” “Well, that’s unfortunate, because Bosco paid for your tattoo removal by having a voluntary head detachment.” “That’s not good.” “He reveres you, but his head is, for the moment, physically separated from his body.” “Oh, dear,” said Jessica. “How awful for him.” [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Wade Presses the Sex Now Button and Koizumi Visits [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Wade woke up in his hotel room and pressed W, for woman, on the Sex Now button of his remote control. Then he dozed off. About ten minutes later, he heard the door open—the woman had a keycard, he supposed. He heard her slip off her slippers and her bathrobe in the dark and get into bed next to him. He could tell from the way she moved in the bed that she was naked. “Hi. Wow, that was fast,” he said. “Hello, my name is Koizumi. I’m a sculptor. I am also a collector of wet-dream memories. Do you have a wet-dream memory for me to collect?” “I’m sorry, I can’t remember. I had only a few, and it was a long time ago.” “Try to remember,” said Koizumi. “You will remember if you try.” Wade shifted so that he was lying on his back, his arms on the blanket. He breathed, thinking. “Okay, I remember one. A woman looked at me. I didn’t know her. She was sitting under a red beach umbrella and wearing a black bathing suit. Nobody else was around. She held out her arms and I asked, ‘Me?’ She nodded. She liked me. She understood me. She wanted me. I walked toward her and knelt in the warm sand, and I put my arms around her, and then I felt this gulping overflowing fizzing of sexual goodness, and I woke up, and I discovered that I had a dab of something in my underpants. I went around for a week thinking, Wow, I’ve had a wet dream. It was great because it was a dream in which something real really happens. I didn’t tell anyone. That’s it. Not very detailed, I’m sorry.” “Thank you,” said Koizumi. “I will let you feel my breasts now.” “Okay, great. Thanks.” Wade felt her breasts. “I’m sorry they are quite small,” Koizumi said. “Nonsense, they’re exquisite, and you know what the Be Good Tanyas say. The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.’ You know the Be Good Tanyas, right?” “Yes, they’re Canadian. I’m Canadian Japanese. I believe in supporting Canadian singers.” “Makes sense,” said Wade. “I believe in Canadian art. Also I believe in men who have quite big penises.” “Do they have to be Canadian men?”

• From The City of God

  385 community, but he knows that it’s a possibility for that community—at least as he believes it. That’s why he holds it out there as an option. For none of this about the heavenly Jerusalem is actually true, and Augustine knows it. For the New Jerusalem, the city of God on pilgrimage still lives in the morally and spiritually homogeneous era of the saeculum and still partakes in all ways of the tedium and the sinfulness of the rest of humanity before the Second Coming. While the Christ event punctuates and structures the otherwise mundane and empty account of history, it does not completely alter the fact that all humanity still lives in the era between Eden and Armageddon. It inaugurates the resolution of this history, but it does not decisively complete it. This severely complicates—some would say, utterly obstructs—any hope for a sort of stable or durable progress or sanctification of humans in the church during history. There will be fallbacks, failures, and all sorts of other disappointments. The churches will grow and then shrink; they’ll be filled with saints and then overflow with sinners. During this whole time, the shape of history is not mounting steadily to some final climax. No moment is in any meaningful way closer to the eschaton than any other; some are just more temporally proximate to it. This raises deep questions about the relationship between exegesis and historical ontology—between what we are supposed to take history to signify typologically and its actual first-order experience and significance for its concrete inhabitants. If historical events take on other meanings, is there one definitive real sense to them? Why should we seek to read and understand history at all, according to Augustine? Is the whole value of all this merely a series of cautionary tales? What exactly does this understanding amount to? Doesn’t it require an empathetic and intimate curiosity about the felt experience of other people, in other ages? Doesn’t Augustine’s approach actively discourage this kind of understanding? Lecture 18 Transcript—Translating the Imperium (Book 18)

• From The City of God

  482 Books That Matter: The City of God 482 to see that our politics is always, inescapably, a disappointed politics of heaven. Knowing that, for Augustine, is the first axiom of political wisdom. „Augustine offers no discrete and portable political philosophy at all, but only a political theology in which the activities and affections that we count as political are a haphazard collection of phenomena scattered across the several dimensions of human life in the world as a whole. Humans must inhabit political communities, in part out of a need to suppress or expel the kinds of turbulent passions and people who make social life so dangerous in a fallen world. „We must critique the religious propriety of patriotism, but we cannot deny the religious duty of public service. Christians must seek the welfare of the city where they live, and in doing so they serve that city better than its more fanatically attached devotees. Vision of Humanity „The second great theme of The City of God is the picture of the human it propounds: a theological anthropology. ›The human is a creature of excess, of gratuity. We are eccentric—that is, having our centers outside of ourselves. We find our true end not in enclosed self-satisfaction, but in ecstatic going outside of ourselves in praise and union with God. ›Once we are untethered from God after the Fall, our affections keep flowing from us. We are, essentially, a creature who loves to praise, to give glory, to worship. „Augustine chooses to capture this fact about us by making love the key term of his anthropology. It is hard to overestimate the decisiveness of this choice for future thought—not just politically, but theologically and morally—in the West. Theologically and

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  There was a bonging sound and a commotion. A disembodied male arm leapt up, twirled once in the air, and seized Dune by the wrist. Krock hurried in and grabbed the knife. Mischa set out the chopping block on a towel. “Dune, why did you do it?” said Shandee, full of disappointment and concern. “I forgot myself, I’m sorry,” said Dune, disengaging the viselike fingers of Dave’s arm. He turned to Krock and Mischa. “Now hear me out, guys. I play keyboards and guitar, and to be honest I’d rather lose my pecker for a little while than my ability to make music.” That statement got Krock’s attention. “Daggett,” he said into his communicator, “tell Lila that Dune has verbally agreed before witnesses to lose his pecker.” Lila was pacing up and down in front of her desk when Dune was led in. “All right, Mr. Pussyfinger,” she said firmly. “Just for that bit of defiance, we’re going to do a switcheroo on you.” She opened a door. In walked Marcela, the art critic, in a black slip. “Hello,” she said, with a nervous smile. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Chilli Goes to the Porndecahedron with Dave [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Chilli met Dave at eleven o’clock at the border crossing. She’d put on a little makeup and was wearing sandals and a sleeveless white shirt with black buttons. “Hi there,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m really sorry, I can’t go with you.” “Oh, pshaw, sure you can,” said Dave. “See the sights!” “Well, just a quick visit then.” They walked through a thicket and emerged at a clearing and climbed a low stone fence and walked a little farther. Dave pointed out the White Lake and the midway. They bought some falafels and ate them, while Dave told her about the darkrooms, where you talked in utter darkness. Chilli seemed to like that idea, so they checked into a darkroom and sat. “So how did everything go yesterday?” asked Dave in the dark. “Just fine,” Chilli said, enigmatically. “Now, tell me how this Porndecahedron works.” Dave said, “It’s a twelve-sided projection theater, like a dodecahedron. You’ve heard of buckyballs, right? It’s a big buckyball that you go inside of. There’s a cluster of seats in the middle, either single or tandem seats, and you go in and sit in a seat, buckled in for safety, because you’re suspended. You sit there and movies play on all the screens around you.” “Dirty movies.” “Well, you pick the playlist. Could be music videos, or a mashup from Brad Pitt movies, or handjobs, or beautiful Balinese dancers, or men having sex with each other—some women like to watch men having sex, it seems. Some people are into fetishes, so then there’ll be twelve screens of, say, men coming on women’s feet.” “Oh, wow,” said Chilli.

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

  7. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none; cut it down: why cumbereth it the ground? 8. And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: 9. And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. The Jews were boasting, that while the eighteen had perished, they all remained unhurt. He therefore sets before them the parable of the fig tree, for it follows, He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. AMBROSE. There was a vineyard of the Lord of hosts, which He gave for a spoil to the Gentiles. And the comparison of the fig tree to the synagogue is well chosen, because as that tree abounds with wide and spreading foliage, and deceives the hopes of its possessor with the vain expectation of promised fruit, so also in the synagogue, while its teachers are unfruitful in good works, yet magnify themselves with words as with abundant leaves, the empty shadow of the law stretches far and wide. This tree also is the only one which puts forth fruit in place of flowers. And the fruit falls, that other fruit may succeed; yet some few of the former remain, and do not fall. For the first people of the synagogue fell off as a useless fruit, in order that out of the fruitfulness of the old religion might arise the new people of the Church; yet they who were the first out of Israel whom a branch of a stronger nature bore, under the shadow of the law and the cross, in the bosom of both, stained with a double juice after the example of a ripening fig, surpassed all others in the grace of most excellent fruits; to whom it is said, You shall sit upon twelve thrones. Some however think the fig tree to be a figure not of the synagogue, but of wickedness and treachery; yet these differ in nothing from what has gone before, except that they choose the genus instead of the species. BEDE. The Lord Himself who established the synagogue by Moses, came born in the flesh, and frequently teaching in the synagogue, sought for the fruits of faith, but in the hearts of the Pharisees found none; therefore it follows, And came seeking fruit on it, and found none.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  “He’s kind of angry,” she whispered. Then she listened some more to the telephone. “He wants to talk to you.” Cardell took the phone. “Hello, sir?” There was a strong voice in his ear. “I don’t know who you are, but stay away from my wife. Leave the condo immediately.” “I will leave the condo, but I would really like to see her come first, and I know that’s a problem for you, but I also know she wants to see my mandingo. I’m just going to shuck my boxers off, and my mandingo will be sticking out, and she’ll get a good look at it. She wants to, I know it. Do you say yes?” “No, you will not bring out any such mandingo!” the husband choked. “You will absolutely do nothing of the sort! You are out of line!” He hung up. Cardell handed the phone back to Betsy, shaking his head. “Oh, he’s such an old poke-in-the-dough,” she said. “Are you disappointed?” He nodded. “You poor thing, you wanted to see me come, didn’t you?” He nodded again. She looked at him appraisingly. “And then you’d come, wouldn’t you? You probably have a cock that you’d jerk off big-time, wouldn’t you? I know you just love jerking off that proud nasty cock.” “That I do,” he said. “Hard as a ship’s biscuit, but fresher.” She had an idea. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s go out on the back deck and I’ll pretend to have sex with my husband, and I’ll tell you all about it, and you’ll watch me pretending. Will that work?” “That sounds like a good fallback,” Cardell said. So they went out to the back deck, and she started with the running commentary. “Usually I’m in bed first,” she said. “He stays up doing the crossword—he’s good at it, but it takes him a long time sometimes, and I read a book.” “Like what?” “Oh, maybe something a little frisky, a little naughty,” said Betsy. “And sometimes I just turn my light off and go to sleep, and sometimes I’m still reading when I hear him washing up and sniffing. He hangs up his pants carefully and puts on his pajamas, which are on a hook on the back of the closet door. We have two hooks. Am I boring you?” Cardell was smiling, watching her tell the story, lying back on a lounge chair and feeling perfectly happy. He shook his head. “Good. Then he gets in bed, and if I’m awake and I stir he says, ‘Good-night, hon,’ and I say, ‘Good-night, darling.’ And often we go to sleep.” “But sometimes you don’t.” “Right, sometimes we’ve made a prior arrangement to do the triple-X dirty nasty.” “I see.”

• From The City of God

  [113] The same collocation of words is used by Cicero with reference to the well-known mode of renewing the appetite in use among the Romans. Chapter 21. --Cicero's Opinion of the Roman Republic. But if our adversaries do not care how foully and disgracefully the Roman republic be stained by corrupt practices, so long only as it holds together and continues in being, and if they therefore pooh-pooh the testimony of Sallust to its "utterly wicked and profligate" condition, what will they make of Cicero's statement, that even in his time it had become entirely extinct, and that there remained extant no Roman republic at all? He introduces Scipio (the Scipio who had destroyed Carthage) discussing the republic, at a time when already there were presentiments of its speedy ruin by that corruption which Sallust describes. In fact, at the time when the discussion took place, one of the Gracchi, who, according to Sallust, was the first great instigator of seditions, had already been put to death. His death, indeed, is mentioned in the same book. Now Scipio, at the end of the second book, says:"As among the different sounds which proceed from lyres, flutes, and the human voice, there must be maintained a certain harmony which a cultivated ear cannot endure to hear disturbed or jarring, but which may be elicited in full and absolute concord by the modulation even of voices very unlike one another; so, where reason is allowed to modulate the diverse elements of the state, there is obtained a perfect concord from the upper, lower, and middle classes as from various sounds; and what musicians call harmony in singing, is concord in matters of state, which is the strictest bond and best security of any republic, and which by no ingenuity can be retained where justice has become extinct. "Then, when he had expatiated somewhat more fully, and had more copiously illustrated the benefits of its presence and the ruinous effects of its absence upon a state, Pilus, one of the company present at the discussion, struck in and demanded that the question should be more thoroughly sifted, and that the subject of justice should be freely discussed for the sake of ascertaining what truth there was in the maxim which was then becoming daily more current, that "the republic cannot be governed without injustice. "Scipio expressed his willingness to have this maxim discussed and sifted, and gave it as his opinion that it was baseless, and that no progress could be made in discussing the republic unless it was established, not only that this maxim, that "the republic cannot be governed without injustice," was false, but also that the truth is, that it cannot be governed without the most absolute justice. And the discussion of this question, being deferred till the next day, is carried on in the third book with great animation. For Pilus himself undertook to defend the position that the republic cannot be governed without injustice, at the same time being at special pains to clear himself of any real participation in that opinion. He advocated with great keenness the cause of injustice against justice, and endeavored by plausible reasons and examples to demonstrate that the former is beneficial, the latter useless, to the republic. Then, at the request of the company, Laelius attempted to defend justice, and strained every nerve to prove that nothing is so hurtful to a state as injustice; and that without justice a republic can neither be governed, nor even continue to exist.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Daddy ain’t never going to have no trouble with her— that one, she was born holy. I bet the first words she ever said was: “Thank you, Jesus.” Ain’t that so, Ma?’ ‘You stop this foolishness,’ she said, laughing, ‘and go on about your work. Can’t nobody play the fool with you all morning.’ ‘Oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? Well, I declare,’ said Roy, ‘what you got for me to do?’ ‘I got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do. And you going to do it, too, before you set foot out of this house.’ ‘Now, why you want to talk like that, Ma? Is I said I wouldn’t do it? You know I’m a right good worker when I got a mind. After I do it, can I go?’ ‘You go ahead and do it, and we’ll see. You better do it right.’ ‘I always do it right,’ said Roy. ‘You won’t know your old woodwork when I get through.’ ‘John,’ said his mother, ‘you sweep the front room for me like a good boy, and dust the furniture. I’m going to clean up in here.’ ‘Yes’m,’ he said, and rose. She had forgotten about his birthday. He swore he would not mention it. He would not think about it any more. To sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep the heavy red and green and purple Oriental-style carpet that had once been that room’s glory, but was now so faded that it was all one swimming colour, and so frayed in places that it tangled with the broom. John hated sweeping this carpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose and sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should he sweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish, the rug would not be clean.