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 Shunned (2018)

  He looked at me, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Was it resentment or disappointment? The father who raised me— the pragmatic, independent thinker who bristled at rules and resented fearmongering —he was gone. We’d switched places in the family dynamic. I rued the day he was baptized, and harbored a wish that he would be sensible and support me in secret. That he did not speak to me directly shattered that fantasy. Lory looked at me hard. “When you have children someday, I want you to promise you’ll tell them the truth about why we don’t talk to you.” She had done as I had done and mapped this out into the future, in which months or years would slip by without contact. “Do you plan to have children?” Mom asked. “Is the man someone you plan to marry?” As with the elders and Ross, I had chosen not to go into detail about “the man.” “No plans like that, no.” “What are your plans, then?” Lory challenged me. “What are your goals?” Ah, my goals. Any reply would sound feeble to their way of thinking. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling pressure to sound more “together.” The truth was, I didn’t have any clear, defined goals, spiritual or otherwise. I knew only that I was enjoying the freedom of not having all the answers, reveling in a state of curiosity and discovery about the world. I wasn’t certain that I even wanted to have children of my own. I knew I’d eventually wish to settle down with someone special but suspected that was years away. I’d been lucky enough to meet plenty of good men. I enjoyed dating for fun, unburdened from the Witness presumption of marriage. For the time being, I’d be happy to achieve some post- religious, post-marriage emotional stasis, to continue moving forward in my career, to become financially strong, and to travel. “I’d like to get in good physical shape and ride my bike around France.” It sounded trite, but it was an answer I could live with. “And what is your hope for the future, and for conditions to improve on the earth, if you don’t have The Truth?” Lory pressed. “If you don’t put faith in Jehovah or The Kingdom, then what? Your job? Your bank account? Your health?” Though I maintained a facade of confidence, inside I squirmed at these questions. I had no answers here, trite or otherwise. I was floating in a spiritual void, where existential questions about God and spirit swirled about me, unsolved, a far cry from the certainty of my whole life up to that point, the same certainty Lory still had.

• From Shunned (2018)

  And you know what to do to make that happen.” Disappointment rang through me, and my body felt flushed with heat as I pulled away from her. Even now, she was clinging to her conditions. This is wack! You look at the sky through a straw. This fanatical behavior is not worthy of you! You used to tell me Bible stories of pagan parents who sacrificed their children in the fires to Baal and shake your head in disgust. Now it is you who sacrifices a relationship with your daughter. And for what? For rules that cannot stand the test of logic or love. That was what I thought, but it was not what I said. I took a deep breath instead. I would launch into that tearful diatribe later, at the bar with my husband. I just needed to hold it together a few moments longer. I cupped Mom’s cheeks in both hands, aware of the needless fears she harbored for my everlasting life. I smiled and shook my head. Now I turned to my father, the parent who’d given me blue eyes, brown hair, and curiosity about the world. Even when I had my heels on, he loomed over me. He had the sweetest, most melancholy smile. He was just trying to get through this ordeal and squeeze out all the best parts. We would allow ourselves to fully experience our sadness later, in private. We embraced without saying a word. Then I stood in front of my brother and his family. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to spend much time together,” I said. “But I’m grateful for the time we did have . . . for me to see that you’re doing well.” Randy’s eyes were wide, his face animated with bright red patches on his cheeks, like sections of small countries on a globe. He was anxious for me to leave, to release him from this uncomfortable encounter. “Yes,” he said. Both hands were shoved into his suit pants pockets. Marlene stood near him, a protective sentry. Tyler was still wearing a suit coat and a shy, curious look. He’s heard stories about me, the worldly, renegade aunt who is to be avoided. I shook Tyler’s hand formally, then hugged Randy and Marlene. Bob slipped his shoes back on, and Ove handed us our jackets. I was too warm to cloak myself in wool. “It’s time for you to leave so we can talk about you,” Ove said, and giggled to press home the joke. Everyone else laughed awkwardly. Bob and I just looked at each other. What a jerk. “Until we meet again,” I said, keeping one hand on the doorknob and waving with the other. The night air gripped and soothed me.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  7 Augsburg was one of the foremost cities in the empire with a strong populist evangelical movement, so its theological orientation mattered. But by the summer of 1526, only Stefan Agricola, Caspar Huber, and Luther’s old friend Johannes Frosch, in whose monastery Luther had stayed during the discussions with Cajetan in Augsburg, were still persuaded by Luther’s position. Leadership of the evangelical movement in Augsburg had passed to men like Michael Keller, Johann Landsperger, and Urbanus Rhegius, who preached a more communalist model for the Reformation. Luther knew how dangerous this shift was. In the autumn, in what seems to be the first letter to his friend in many years, he wrote exhorting Frosch to “remain firm.” 8 In Nördlingen, Luther had relied on his solid ally Theobald Billican, but now Billican too was leaning toward the Swiss in some respects; 9 in Ulm, Conrad Sam switched to the sacramentarian position. At least in Schwäbisch Hall, Johannes Brenz remained loyal, while the Nurembergers also still held the Lutheran line. However, with the loss of the imperial cities of Augsburg, Ulm, Basle, Zurich, and Strasbourg—all major centers of printing—Luther was becoming increasingly detached from developments in the south. In Strasbourg, Otto Brunfels, the humanist and friend of the knight Ulrich von Hutten, spoke for many when he published a letter to Luther in which he expressed his sorrow at the rift with Karlstadt: He admired both, he wrote, and could not love Luther without also embracing Karlstadt. 10 Nor was dissent confined to the south. In Liegnitz, Conrad Cordatus had to be peremptorily ordered to leave the “opponents of Christ,” 11 and in other parts of Silesia the noblemen Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald were persuaded that there was no bodily presence in the Eucharist. Schwenckfeld traveled to Wittenberg in December 1525 to discuss the matter with Luther in person, but despite three days of argument, neither side convinced the other. 12 In the spring of 1526 Luther sent Schwenckfeld a bitter letter ordering him to desist from his errors. If he would not, “then God’s will be done. Although I am heartily sorry, yet I am not responsible for your blood, nor for the blood of all those whom you lead astray with [your teachings]. May God convert you. Amen.” 13 Nontheologians were inspired by sacramentarian ideas, too, because they chimed with a deep-rooted, commonsense anticlericalism. Rare surviving testimony of their beliefs came from Hans Mohr, captain of the foot soldiers at Coburg Castle in electoral Saxony, who thought that it “was wrong, that out of the created things, the bread and wine of the Lord, they want to make the Creator himself.” The common people were being piteously misled, he believed, and although he was happy to keep quiet about this, he would give his opinion if people asked him what he thought over meals or at the inn.

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  5. When there appeared to be no hope, God would intervene once and for all. Christ would appear from heaven to overthrow the forces of evil and set up his kingdom on earth. C. Lindsey insisted that his portrayal of future events is rooted completely in the Scriptures, which accurately portrayed the future of our planet. 1. The problem, of course, is that this claim has been made by every Christian doomsday prophet from the beginning. As always happens, when the predictions do not occur, the prophets must go back to the drawing board. 2. What is most intriguing is that the evangelistic fervor never dies down with each successive edition. 3 When it appeared to Lindsay that it wasn’t going to happen as predicted, he wrote another book, 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, arguing that everything was going according to plan. The book was on The New York Times bestseller list for 21 weeks. D. Evidently, Lindsey’s reputation has not been tarnished a whit by his failed interpretations or his more recent claims that UFOs are deceptive ruses by demons, who will soon stage a massive UFO landing to mislead earthlings into believing in life on other planets. His books and videos continue to be enormously popular. IV. If we had more time, we could detail other failed prophecies that have been made throughout the course of Christian history. It is worth noting, at least, that they seem to recur in almost every generation. I’ll mention a couple of striking examples, not even dealing with the massive concerns among some believers over the approach of the year 2000. A. Possibly the most well known American failed prophecy was experienced by the followers of William Miller. Miller was a New York farmer who predicted, on the basis of a careful study of his Bible, that the world would end in a cosmic blaze of glory in 1843. Some among his thousands of followers gave away everything they owned in expectation of the day; some went to court to get everything back later. B. Even more significant historically were the predictions of the Italian monk, Joachim of Fiore, who demonstrated that the anti- Christ would soon appear and the end of the age would arrive by ©2000 The Teaching Company. 157

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Around eleven, the door swings wide, and Warren lays Dev in my arms before tiptoeing downstairs to his pallet in the living room, where the white-fog machine throws up each night a wall of noise beyond which we don’t exist. He’s working, going to grad school full-time. I have to breastfeed anyway, the argument goes. Then Mother flies up to help, a sober mother who sees frying chicken and assembling lasagna as a way to mend all the chaos she’d brought in the thirty years prior. All my life, she lived in a state of irritation predicated on either drinking too much or not having drunk enough. Never (is this true?) did I lie in bed and have her cook for me. As a child, when I got measles and chickenpox, she’d announce, I just don’t like sick people, leaving me feverishly staring at the TV’s flickering grown-ups. On this trip, Mother is transformed. She goes with me to the clinic every day, helping me load the baby in the car. Most evenings she brings my dinner steaming from a tray—doughy dumplings in oniony broth, chicken collapsed off its bones, turnip greens with fatback. Afternoons, she lies in bed with me, the baby between us kicking his covers off as I gaze at him. Mary, I believe you’re gonna stare the skin off him, she says. Sober she might be, but she’s still capricious as a cat. After about a week, when I’ve gotten used to counting on her, she disappears one day. I’d run out of diapers, and she’d rushed heroically off to the store. Her first hour away, I figure she got lost. An hour later, I decide she’s had a car wreck. An hour after that, I know she’s dead or stopped at a bar somewhere, so I wrap Dev’s bare ass in a towel held together by duct tape and lug him to the market in a stroller, finding no sign of our car in the lot. Late that afternoon Mother prances in with brochures for tours of Russia and China. She is—miraculously enough—cold sober. But she met a man at a travel agency next to the grocery store, and he took her to lunch and to see the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum. By then she’s built up enough goodwill during the visit that I let it slide. My therapist later reminds me that, however sober, Mother will forever be a haphazard fetcher of necessary items. Treat her more like a five-year-old, the therapist says, which method starts shaping expectations to the right size.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  One of God’s little prototypes , Hunter Thompson once said of some ne’er-do-well pal— never even considered for mass production . I pore over books about getting knocked up as if it weren’t standard order for every creature from cat to cockroach. Warren knows I’m logging my morning temperature, a sharp rise being a sign that you’ve dropped an egg into the chute. The first slightly overheated morning, it so happens that Hurricane Gloria has ripped down the phone lines on our block and shut down the library. Warren takes the bus home early like a man summoned to battle, and a month later, I miss my period. Already? he says, staring at me across the huge steaks I’ve splurged on, the half-empty bottle of nonalcoholic wine. You’re not excited, I say. He considers the burgundy fizz in the glass. Tastes like grape syrup. Not about the wine, you bonehead, I say. About the bun in the oven . Baby Otis? Warren says. It’s great. Pouring him more nonalcoholic wine, I say, You’re upset. You’re not excited. He stares across the candlelit table. No, he says. I mean, yes. It’s just… I’ve Ziploc-bagged the telltale pregnancy thermometer and stuck it in a vase between us, tying it with a ribbon like a daisy. He touches it with a finger as if it might be hot, saying, How reliable is this? I mean, should you go to the doctor or something? Despite his slight remove, I think what a perfect dad he’ll make, tempered as he is by gentleness. He once quoted to me Henry James’s three rules: Be kind, be kind, be kind. I’ve observed him with his sister’s kids, patiently tossing the whiffle ball underhand. They climb into his lap for stories. But few men—no matter how tenderhearted—go so gaga over the unborn as an inseminated woman will. At night I read one baby book after another, and most spare weekend hours I spend pawing through garage sales for cast-off cribs and baby clothes. And so begins what I see as his slow fade from me. We talk less and less, and since we both grew up in houses schooled to letting people vaporize into their own internal deserts with alacrity, we each let the other get smaller. At Christmas, his father says he knew I was pregnant when I said no to wine, and many toasts are drunk to my health and the baby’s. My mother-in-law promises to ante up all the baby clothes and linens, and Mr. Whitbread says he’ll cover my half of the rent. But driving home, Warren’s silence fills the car. What is it? I say. Nothing, he says. It’s nothing. You’re looking at me so sternly, I say. And truly staring at him, I see in his green eyes that some metal doors seemed to have slid shut. Buckle your seat belt, he says. You need to start wearing a seat belt. The car continues down the snowy and narrowing road .

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Too much noise meant the scratching sounds that my pencil made while writing in my notebook, breathing, or just basically being alive. For an activity that was supposed to bring a feeling of calm, and deep contentment, as well as furthering oneself on the path of spiritual mastery, or so the author of the paper on meditation espoused, it was, in my opinion, failing my stepfather on all levels. When I’d finished reading “The Benefits of Meditation,” I looked for something else to do and realized that I had already examined everything. Sara had settled into a school desk, absorbed in one of the many Archie comics from our collection. I left and reentered the hallway, peering around my murky surroundings before leaving the building for an aimless walk around the property. Unfortunately, I had finished my novel on the ride to LA and was in need of a good used bookstore. I must have walked for a solid half hour before I decided to head back to see if the meditation had ended yet. As I approached the small hill that the main structure resided on, I saw in the distance a line of schoolchildren led by a woman, their teacher, I assumed, marching rhythmically in my direction. The children and the woman were shouting something, but they were too far away for me to make out what they were yelling. I stopped and watched them come closer. The children wore uniforms, similar to the uniform of Catholic students, and as they snaked stiffly down the hill, their voices became clear to my ears. “We are the light!” They chanted over and over again. I watched in disbelief as they continued marching toward me and past me. There’s no way I’m staying here, I thought, just as I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Theresa, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. “Isn’t it far out?” she said. “They’re shouting positive affirmations. This is so hip. Wouldn’t it be great to join them?” Theresa stood with her hands clasped tightly, beaming at the schoolchildren shouting New Age chants. How could she be my mother? I wondered, not for the first time. A sharp disappointment stabbed at my insides. “I’m not living here,” I stated flatly, just as Ray and Sara came to join us. “Hey, watch your attitude.” Ray took a few steps toward me. I stood my ground. “I’m not moving here, and that’s final. If you think I’m putting on one of those retarded uniforms to go marching all over the fucking place yelling ‘I am the light,’ I’m not doing it!” “Wherever we decide to live, that is where you will be.” Ray pushed his face into mine. His breath smelled like herbal vitamins and alfalfa sprouts. “Ray, stop this,” Theresa intervened. “We can discuss it later.” “No.” I turned on my mother. “I’m not going to sit for three hours in analysis of my thoughts with you.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  In the end Horton is accosted by Mazie when she happens to come flying by one day and sees him getting so much attention for sitting on her egg in a circus that he never wanted to be in. I always felt satisfied at the justice of the egg finally cracking open to birth a baby elephant with wings. This Dr. Seuss book, told in a humorous way that I could understand and to which I could relate at age seven, provided parallels to my own experiences and feelings of parental abandonment, displacement and living as an exile in a foreign culture. One day an announcement was made, in typical Synanon fashion, that children seven and older were no longer allowed to check out picture books at the library and instead were required to borrow books with a minimum of one hundred pages. This rule felt like a disaster to me. I loved picture books. Books filled only with text were one step below newspapers, which at least had comic strips. It took only a few days for me to realize that the new rule was one of the best ever enforced by the demonstrators. As I combed through the middle-school readers, I found Ruth Chew’s quirky stories of children who discovered befuddled witches in their closets and under their beds. The cover image of two girls dancing gaily with a lion, a wreath of flowers around the cat’s neck, soon had me immersed in the adventures of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I inhaled the whole Wizard of Oz series and the adventures of Johnny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and Andy. Raggedy Ann was something of a mystic. She and Raggedy Andy were forever going on adventures in forests where hotdogs grew on trees, lollypop bushes abounded and there were soda water springs if ever anyone became thirsty. Usually the characters would stumble upon a general store in the middle of nowhere, the proprietor only too happy to give away his merchandise, as the dolls had no money. The suspenseful part of the tale came when Raggedy Ann and Andy were captured by a wizard or witch who lived in the “deep, deep woods” and wanted to cut Ann open and steal her magical candy heart. Raggedy Ann’s compassion for her wicked captors knew no bounds. In one story she chided Raggedy Andy for purposely distracting a witch who was trying to remember the spell to render Raggedy Ann unconscious so she could then destroy the doll. These villains always burst into tears of frustration when their spells didn’t work, and Raggedy Ann would comfort them by telling them that all the magic they needed was right there inside of them and that if they would just clear the cobwebs of sorrow and selfishness from their minds, rays of goodness and kindliness would light up their souls.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  The road curved west, where the sun had now dipped low. He figured it was close to five o'clock—twenty after, he guessed. The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way. What he should do, he thought, is stop at Sally's house and impress her with this new time-telling trick of his. They'd talk for a while, catching up on things, and then he'd say, "Well, better hit the road, it's five thirty-four," and she'd glance at her wrist-watch and say, "Hey! How'd you do that?" and he'd give a casual shrug and tell her it was just one of those things you pick up. He'd keep it light. He wouldn't say anything about anything. "How's it being married?" he might ask, and he'd nod at whatever she answered with, and he would not say a word about how he'd almost won the Silver Star for valor. He drove past Slater Park and across the causeway and past Sunset Park. The radio announcer sounded tired. The temperature in Des Moines was eighty-one degrees, and the time was five thirty-five, and "All you on the road, drive extra careful now on this fine Fourth of July." If Sally had not been married, or if his father were not such a baseball fan, 1t would have been a good time to talk. "The Silver Star?" his father might have said. "Yes, but I didn't get it. Almost, but not quite." And his father would have nodded, knowing full well that many brave men do not win medals for their bravery, and that others win medals for doing nothing. As a starting point, maybe, Norman Bowker might then have listed the seven medals he did win: the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Air Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart, though his wound was minor and did not leave a scar and did not hurt and never had. He would've explained to his father that none of these decorations was for uncommon valor. They were for common valor. The routine, daily stuff —yjust humping, just enduring—but that was worth something, wasn't it? Yes, it was. Worth plenty. The ribbons looked good on the uniform in his closet, and if his father were to ask, he would've explained what each signified and how he was proud of all of them, especially the Combat Infantryman's Badge, because it meant he had been there as a real soldier and had done all the things soldiers do, and therefore it wasn't such a big deal that he could not bring himself to be uncommonly brave. And then he would have talked about the medal he did not win and why he did not win it. "T almost won the Silver Star," he would have said. "How's that?" "Just a story."

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “I really think we should live in our own home for once.” I handed the crystal to Sara, who agreed immediately, but our words were about as effective as a warm breeze on a hot humid day. Our parents had already made up their minds. Ray and Theresa informed us that they did not have enough money to take the time we would need to build our life in the nuclear family dynamic. Mainstream culture, they told us, prided itself on independence, competition, and autonomy. What’s more, Jane and her family were coming back in two weeks to reclaim their apartment, and we needed to begin our search right away, tomorrow in fact. First on our list was a community called Kerista in San Francisco. “They’re polyamorous,” Theresa said, beaming at all of us. I didn’t know what that meant, but I concluded that it probably wasn’t as great as she was making it out to be because Ray looked unnervingly glum. Chapter TwoFree Love, Spirulina, And Ascended Masters Of The Violet Flame–––––––––––––––––––– We arrived the following evening at the Kerista compound located in the Haight. The community members had pooled their financial resources to rent several buildings and some apartments. We were hosted, along with a few other visitors, in a spacious dining hall. Furniture had been cleared away except for several long tables set to the side. Their communal philosophy and history existed in the form of various pamphlets and brochures that lay displayed on the tables. Clothing was casual: blue jeans and t-shirts. A few people even wore overalls, the uniform of Synanon. Bandanas were popular, and many of the men and women kept their hair back in blue, red, or green cotton paisley head coverings. People arranged themselves on the floor toward the middle of the room in one big circle. To my relief, kids were not required to participate, so I wandered toward the tables to browse the literature. One black-and-white brochure showed on its cover a couple arm in arm and beaming broad smiles. The woman wore baggy overalls and had thick brown hair that looked as if it had not been brushed in a week, a bandana partially holding back her unruly locks. Her partner, a grandfatherly, pot-bellied man with a thick white beard, also wore overalls and resembled St. Nicholas, if Father Christmas had been a hippie. The caption beneath the picture stated that the two were married and enjoyed spending quality time as a couple. Intrigued, I read on to learn that they had married some years ago when she was in her early twenties and he was close to fifty. However, Jud was only one of several husbands to his much younger wife, and, in addition, there were other wives who shared in their “Best-Friend Identity Cluster,” or B-FIC. Apparently, theirs was the first B-FIC to form in the community. The young woman’s enthusiasm for Jud and her other marriage partners seemed to gush off the page.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  A few weeks later I boarded a van with Theresa to spend a weekend with her and her new husband, Andrew, at the Marin Bay property. Children rarely set foot on the Bay property, which was reserved mostly for VIPs’ homes. On the first night of my visit Theresa and I met Andrew in the dining hall for gracious dining, Synanon’s version of a gourmet restaurant. When I first glimpsed Andrew’s face without the gorilla costume, I was surprised to discover he was magnificently ugly. For the first few minutes I couldn’t stop looking at him. His eyes seemed too close together under his prominent forehead. His lips were big for a white man’s, his nose shaped somewhat like that of a pug’s. He had the figure of a boxer and wore slacks and a buttoned-up long-sleeve shirt. A smile danced at the corner of his lips, and anything he said sent Theresa into a fit of giggles. Her flushed cheeks and shiny eyes enhanced her natural beauty. Having learned the word “sexy,” I saw that that was how Theresa saw Andrew. Were there ways to be sexy that I didn’t know about? I waited for a natural break in the conversation, then asked, “Excuse me, but are you a sexy man?” My question broke through the giggles and harrumphs and landed in an awkward silence followed by a bellow of laughter. “Honey,” Andrew said to me in a booming voice, “I’m so sexy I can’t stand it.” “Oh,” I said. His answer disappointed me. I’d hoped he’d say no and thought that I’d somehow misunderstood something along the way. During dinner I fired off a litany of off-color penis and potty jokes that we children found hilarious. Having spent so little time in the company of adults, I was out of touch regarding appropriate, respectful dialogue between a child and her elders. “Did you hear the joke about these three men, a white guy, a black guy and a Chinese guy?” I said. “No.” Andrew smiled and leaned his elbows on the table, resting his face in his palms. “Well, there were three men: a Chinese, a white and a black trying to talk the devil out of sending them to hell,” I said. “The devil said, ‘If you want the chance of not going to hell, let me hold your dick and if it doesn’t melt, you can go to heaven.’ They all wanted a chance to not get thrown in hell. The Chinese guy went first. His dick melted, so he went to hell. Next came the white guy. The same thing happened to him. Finally, it was the black guy’s turn. When the devil held his dick, he was surprised because it didn’t melt.” I paused to give the punch line maximum effect. “The devil asked him, ‘How come your dick didn’t melt?’ And the black guy said, ‘It melts in your mouth, not in your hands!’” Andrew stared at me, blank-faced. “Do you get it?

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  3. During Jesus’ life, he talked about the kingdom of God that was soon to arrive and evidently maintained that he would have a place of prominence in it. His followers came to think that that was precisely what would happen; Jesus would reign as the future ruler, the King of the Jews, the Messiah. 4. During Jesus’ life, he talked about implementing the ethics of the kingdom. His followers came to think that the kingdom had already begun and that he was already its ruler. In fact, he was ruler of all things in heaven and earth—the Lord of all. D. In a relatively brief time, the disciples shifted their attention away from the imminent arrival of the Son of Man and the kingdom of God onto Jesus himself, whose resurrection revealed that he was the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah, and the Lord. III. Jesus’ early followers, though, had considerable difficulty trying to convince other Jews of their claims. We have seen that Jews at the time had a range of expectations of what the future messiah would be like. A. Some saw him as a great warrior figure like King David, one who would take up arms against the foreign oppressor, drive him out of the land, and reestablish Israel as a sovereign state. B. Others saw the messiah as: a cosmic figure of power who would come from heaven to destroy God’s enemies or a mighty priest who was authorized by God to deliver divinely inspired interpretations of God’s law. In every case, the messiah was a figure of power and grandeur. C. Jesus, of course, was none of these things, but an itinerant preacher from rural Galilee who was crucified as a common criminal. Jesus’ death showed most Jews that he was not the messiah. Most considered the idea that he was the messiah to be blasphemous. 1. Christians today tend to think that Jesus was crucified, because that was what the messiah was supposed to do. 2. Before Christianity, we have no indication that any Jew anywhere thought that the messiah would suffer and die, even for the sins of the world. Not a single reference exists to any such idea in any Jewish text—including the Hebrew Bible— before Christianity. 3. Why then do Christians assume that that is what the Jewish messiah was supposed to do? Because that’s what the early ©2000 The Teaching Company. 149

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Mark Fossie would nod at this, even smile and agree, but it made him uncomfortable. He couldn't pin it down. Her body seemed foreign somehow —too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too. When she laughed now, which was rare, it was only when something struck her as truly funny. Her voice seemed to reorganize itself at a lower pitch. In the evenings, while the men played cards, she would sometimes fall into long elastic silences, her eyes fixed on the dark, her arms folded, her foot tapping out a coded message against the floor. When Fossie asked about it one evening, Mary Anne looked at him for a long moment and then shrugged. "It's nothing," she said. "Really nothing. To tell the truth, I've never been happier in my whole life. Never." Twice, though, she came in late at night. Very late. And then finally she did not come in at all. Rat Kiley heard about it from Fossie himself. Before dawn one morning, the kid shook him awake. He was in bad shape. His voice seemed hollow and stuffed up, nasal-sounding, as if he had a bad cold. He held a flashlight in his hand, clicking it on and off. "Mary Anne," he whispered, "I can't find her." Rat sat up and rubbed his face. Even in the dim light it was clear that the boy was in trouble. There were dark smudges under his eyes, the frayed edges of somebody who hadn't slept in a while. "Gone," Fossie said. "Rat, listen, she's sleeping with somebody. Last night, she didn't even ... I don't know what to do." Abruptly then, Fossie seemed to collapse. He squatted down, rocking on his heels, still clutching the flashlight. Just a boy—eighteen years old. Tall and blond. A gifted athlete. A nice kid, too, polite and good-hearted, although for the moment none of it seemed to be serving him well. He kept clicking the flashlight on and off. "All right, start at the start," Rat said. "Nice and slow. Sleeping with who?" "T don't know who. Eddie Diamond." "Eddie?" "Has to be. The guy's always there, always hanging on her." Rat shook his head. "Man, I don't know. Can't say it strikes a right note, not with Eddie." "Yes, but he's—" "Easy does it," Rat said. He reached out and tapped the boy's shoulder. "Why not just check some bunks? We got nine guys. You and me, that's two, so there's seven possibles. Do a quick body count." Fossie hesitated. "But I can't ... If she's there, I mean, if she's with somebody—" "Oh, Christ."

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  My first taste of sugar after years without it was not as great as I’d thought it would be. Though at first I was excited to receive an Oreo cookie, I could barely endure the first bite. It tasted terrible. How had I never noticed? The chocolate part was bad enough, but the icing inside tasted so sweet that I found it inedible. The fizzy lemon flavor of 7Up lingered on my tongue like watery, tangy pancake syrup. A gulp of Coca-Cola created the sensation that my teeth were dissolving in the high carbonation. Alarmed, I ran to the bathroom, opened my mouth and saw to my relief that my teeth were still intact. Doughnuts still tasted okay and some cakes did, too, but only if they were plain, without icing or frosting. Gradually my palate adapted, and once again I built up a tolerance for sugary foods, though I still care little for soda. The sudden release from years of sugar-deprivation seemed to turn the community into a horde of raving sugar lunatics. Everyone binged. Massive ice cream-eating contests became common. We’d file into the dining hall, where each person was given a giant wooden bowl large enough for four servings. We selected our flavors from five-gallon tubs, receiving two or more scoops of each flavor along with mounds of whipped cream, flavored syrups, nuts and maraschino cherries. Walking back to my table, I carried a bowl of ice cream so large and heavy it could have easily satisfied a party of six. Yet these giant overindulgent servings were small in comparison with the bowls placed before the contestants, who sat on a makeshift stage. At the announcement of “Go!” they would tuck in, shoveling the cold treat into their mouths among cheers and whistles from the audience, many of whom attempted to keep pace with the contestants. I was not a big fan of ice cream, so after a few bites I left the rest to melt into a soupy brown liquid, mildly regretting the waste. In Synanon we did everything in extremes. Disco parties were held often. Some began in the afternoon with a live production of early American Wild West culture. Dressed in our disco outfits of brightly colored polyester and Lycra spandex bell bottoms, skintight cat suits and miniskirts, with enormous platform shoes, we’d line up along the side of the road near the dining hall to watch the faux shootout. Groups of ten or twelve men dressed like vigilante cowboys from the 1800s would come galloping up on horses with holstered guns at their hips. They’d point their guns, which fired blanks, skyward, firing them off while whooping and pretending to assault one another. We stood clapping and cheering the showdown, which always ended in a duel. When one of the duelers inevitably received a mortal shot and fell to the ground, playing dead, the disco party started, with everyone rushing to the gambling rooms, which were open to all ages.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  All our lives down there, she was the turd in the punch bowl, Lecia gripes. Now she wants to prop us up in front of the bridge club like we’re pigs at the state fair. What’s scariest, I say, is how excited I am that she’s excited. By the time the book hit, Mother fit the Leechfield landscape. Neighbors who once kept their kids from playing in our yard now swap stories about her tantrums like baseball cards. There was the time she upended the oranges in the supermarket display, the fit she threw about parmesan cheese. She flipped off a motorcycle cop. A Baptist deacon who dared to scold her for wearing shorts in the yard heard that he could see evil in the crotch of a tree. Now church ladies holler hey in the afternoon. Mornings, old men jostle to buy Mother coffee at the grocery store. Almost as worrisome is Lecia’s grim focus on a brisket Mother promised to fix. Whenever we drive home, Mother tempts Lecia with some childhood dish—chicken and dumplings, fudge, red beans and rice—but never, not once, follows through. Lecia’s ongoing capacity to hope for these dishes just stumps me. On the road before her, there’s a shimmering mirage of meat shredded in lush gravy with a side of buttery potato hunks. Does she bounce up and down a little in anticipation like a kid on a carousel? I believe she does, though the next instant, her face clouds. It won’t be there, will it? she says, shooting me a look. There’s a newspaper cartoon of a bucket-headed boy repeatedly talked into running at the football held by a wicked pigtailed girl who yanks it away so the boy falls on his ass every time. How many times, Lecia says, am I going to run at that football? Many, it turns out. With scads of costly professional help, I gave up pining for maternal behavior long ago. But Lecia had once hired Mother to pick up her son Case at kindergarten until—a few weeks in—Mother forgot the boy in the parking lot. Given fat sums to answer Lecia’s insurance office phones, Mother tended to snipe into the receiver What? The way Stalin trusted Hitler not to invade Russia, Lecia trusts Mother. In a way, I admire the simple persistence of both parties—Lecia’s overfunctioning, Mother’s under. On any given holiday, Mother sits on her spreading white ass on either porch glider or couch. Which idleness—in some perverse way—I also envy. It takes fortitude to station yourself immobile before the classic-movie channel for days at a pop while hordes of individuals bake and whip, sauté and sear; serve and clear; and eventually scrub cheese crusts off casseroles and pan drippings from a blackened oven.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  3, 18; eis τόπον Polyb. 1. 34, 11. etc. 2. of reports and rumours, to get out, spread abroad, εἰς τὸ στράτευμα Plut. Galb. 22: TIT. to fall asunder, crumble in pieces, Plat. Phaedo 80 C, Arist. Meteor. 2. 7, 6: fo burst, of bubbles, Id. Probl. 24.6: of authors’ works, ¢o be lost, Phot. 2. to fail utterly, go quite wrong, Ar. Eq. 695: of a thing, fo turn out ill, be useless, τὸ συκοφάντημα διέπιπτεν αὐτῷ Aeschin. 33. 19, cf. Polyb. 5. 26, τό, etc.; δ. τῆς δόξης to be disappointed of .., Ep. Socr. 22; περί τινος Arr. Epict. 2. 22, 36. διαπιστεύω, to entrust to one in confidence, τινί τι Aeschin. 54. 39; also, 5. τινὶ περί τινος Id. 26. 40:—Pass. to have a thing entrusted to one, Dem. 145. 3. ΤΊ. to believe thoroughly, τι Arist. P. A. 3. 10, Io. δι-απιστέω, to distrust utterly, Tt Dem. 445. 11, Arist. Pol. 5. 11, 15 :—Med. to mistrust oneself, Polyb. 18. 29, 7. διαπλᾶνάω, to lead quite astray, Plut. 2. 917 E, Arr. Epict. 1. 20, 10: —Pass. to go astray, wander, Diod. 17. 116. διάπλᾶσις, ἡ, a putting into shape: setting of a limb, Galen. διάπλασμα, τό, a modelled jug, Schol. Ar. Vesp. 614. διαπλασμός, ὃ, -- διάπλασις, Epicur. ap. Plut. 2. 877 Ὁ. διαπλάσσω, Att. - ττω, to form, mould, (Ga Philo 1.15; ὕλην, ἄρτους, etc., Plut., etc.; metaph., δ. τῷ λόγῳ Ael. V. H.3. 1, cf. Anth. P. 9. 542 :——Pass., δ. τὰ μόρια [τοῦ ἐμβρύου] Arist. G. A. 2. 4, 39. II. to plaster over, πηλῷ Theophr. H. P. 4. 15, 2. term, to set a limb, Galen. διαπλᾶτύνω, to make very wide, dilate, Xen. Rep. Lac. 2. 5 out, Chrysipp. Tyan. ap. Ath. 648 A. διάπλεγμα, τό, the woof or web, Eust. 1571. 56. διαπλέκω, fut. ἕω, to interweave, to weave together, plait, διέπλεκε θαυματὰ ἔργα he wrought wondrous plaited-work, ἢ. Hom. Merc. 80, cf, Hdt. 4. 67 :—metaph., θρῆνον δ. Pind. P. 12. 14; ἀγὰν πάγχυ δ. to try every twist, wind all ways, Ib. 2. 153 (v. sub ἀγή 3) :—Med., δια- πλέξασθαι κόμην to plait one’s hair, Aristaen. 1. 25:—Pass., ψυχὴ - διαπλακεῖσα interwoven [with matter] .., Plat. Tim. 36 E. 11. ὃ. τὸν βίον, 1. like καταπλέκω τι, Lat. pertexere vitam, διαπλέ- ἔαντος τὸν βίον εὖ to finish the web of one’s life, Hdt. 5. 92, 6 (v.1. διαπλεύσαντος, cf. διαπλέω ; but v. also καταπλέκω) ; 50 also, δ. βίοτον λιπαρῷ γήραϊ Pind. N. 7. 146. 2. simply, to pass life, live, Plat. Legg. 806 A; and without βίον, δ. μετ᾽ ὀρνίθων Ar. Av. 754. διαπλέω, fut. -πλεύσομαι :--ἰο sail across, Thuc. 4. 25; Μέγαράδε Lys, 121. 31; εἰς Αἴγιναν Ar. Vesp. 122, etc.: c. acc., ὃ. TO πέλαγος Plut. 2. 206 Ὁ, Epigr. Gr. 642.13: metaph., δ. βίον to sail through life, make life’s voyage, Plat. Phaedo 85 D: cf. διαπλέκω. διάπλεως, wy, brim-full, Cratin. Incert. 11; pl. διάπλεα, Theophr. C. P. Pine

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "Just this deep, oozy soup," he would've said. "Like sewage or something. Thick and mushy. You couldn't sleep. You couldn't even lie down, not for long, because you'd start to sink under the soup. Real clammy. You could feel the crud coming up inside your boots and pants." Here, Norman Bowker would have squinted against the low sun. He would have kept his voice cool, no self-pity. "But the worst part," he would've said quietly, "was the smell. Partly it was the river—a dead-fish smell—but it was something else, too. Finally somebody figured it out. What this was, it was a shit field. The village toilet. No indoor plumbing, right? So they used the field. I mean, we were camped in a goddamn shit field." He imagined Sally Kramer closing her eyes. If she were here with him, in the car, she would've said, "Stop it. I don't like that word." "That's what it was." "All right, but you don't have to use that word." "Fine. What should we call it?" She would have glared at him. "I don't know. Just stop it." Clearly, he thought, this was not a story for Sally Kramer. She was Sally Gustafson now. No doubt Max would've liked it, the irony in particular, but Max had become a pure idea, which was its own irony. It was just too bad. If his father were here, riding shotgun around the lake, the old man might have glanced over for a second, understanding perfectly well that it was not a question of offensive language but of fact. His father would have sighed and folded his arms and waited. "A shit field," Norman Bowker would have said. "And later that night I could've won the Silver Star for valor." "Right," his father would've murmured, "I hear you." The Chevy rolled smoothly across a viaduct and up the narrow tar road. To the right was open lake. To the left, across the road, most of the lawns were scorched dry like October corn. Hopelessly, round and round, a rotating sprinkler scattered lake water on Dr. Mason's vegetable garden. Already the prairie had been baked dry, but in August it would get worse. The lake would turn green with algae, and the golf course would burn up, and the dragonflies would crack open for want of good water. The big Chevy curved past Centennial Beach and the A&W root beer stand. It was his eighth revolution around the lake. He followed the road past the handsome houses with their docks and wooden shingles. Back to Slater Park, across the causeway, around to Sunset Park, as though riding on tracks. The two little boys were still trudging along on their seven-mile hike.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  How long had you been drinking? Oh I wasn’t drunk, Mother says. Maybe I’d had a few drinks. This completely counters her earlier version, in which she’d claimed to have been shitfaced. But I don’t press it. She shrugs at me, adding, Sheesh. I’d never think to go over this footage myself but for you, Dev. You’re showing my life to me through a new window—not just the video, either. Your birth altered my whole posture on the planet, not to mention my role vis-à-vis Mother. For I partly see her through your vantage. You never knew the knife-wielding goddess of death. She’s your gray-haired grandmother, the one I was always trying to protect you from, even though she was sober when you knew her. Her rages had dissipated, but her childrearing judgment never improved. You still think it’s funny that she let you screen—at age eight—the über-violent Pulp Fiction because she found your interest in nonlinear film methods artistic. But I’d stood before her sputtering, What about the sodomy, Mother? From the corner of the room, you asked what exactly sodomy was. Mother said, When the man hurt the other man. You asked her if it was the guy with the bondage ball in his mouth. Jesus, Mother, I said. You see! Well, he was interested in the movie when his cousin talked about it, Mother said. It’s a testament to your desire to avoid further conflict that you waited till we were on the plane to tell me she’d also shown you—at the outset of our visit—a pearl-handled revolver in her pocketbook. Her rationale? She didn’t want you coming across it in her purse. I’d never go through Grandma Charlie’s purse, you said. Still, you considered the pistol incident something I’d want to know, while you reassured me you were disinclined to play with a loaded weapon.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I never have to find out. The next morning Mr. Consultant skids into the boardroom sideways from a flight I never knew he got on. He takes the laser pointer from my hand, and I sit sweatily at the conference table. Other than taking notes, I’m free of the babble floating over us. Free, that’s how being a poet looks to me, like freedom from the grind among pencil-necked office guys in clip-on ties. Sitting there, I fantasize about the birthday dinner my grad school guru planned in San Francisco before I catch the red-eye back. He’ll talk about translating the great Polish Nobel dude and about the ballads of Wordsworth and about his own drunk mother whose loony-bin demise he managed to live through. He knows the botanical names of plants and how to do carpentry work. In my mind, I picture his curious, becalmed expression the way certain saffron-robed acolytes do Buddha. His very stare will rebaptize me a writer, despite my business suit. But he doesn’t make it. (Later, I’ll find out his bloody divorce had just started.) On the verge of missing my flight, I lug my garment bag back to the rental car and weave drunkenly through the fog to the airport, where I toss down enough cocktails to note how costly my rising tolerance is. Eventually, I call Warren from the pay phone. The phone rings and rings, and I hear my own voice on the machine, and I say, Pick up, pick up. He listens patiently, for he is both patient and a listener. And he reminds me his book isn’t in print yet, either. It’s the work that counts. I feel my mouth slurring words as I ask him to pick me up at the airport in the morning for my birthday—the only present I want. I thought you wanted that party we’re having, he says, with your sister coming for a week. This party—our first—was long negotiated. He’s noting the traffic to and from the airport, the hours of writing he’ll lose. Should I offer to cancel the party in order to be picked up? When he hangs up, I feel confident that I’ll see him at the gate. Having touched down in Boston at dawn, I wander through the airport with an inner plunging sense—no sign of Warren. When the magic doors glide open on the empty taxi stand, I feel the regressed terror of a kid lost in the glass cubicles of a department store because her manic mother has just wandered off—maybe on purpose, maybe not. (Crazy to admit this, but true.) How do you get past it, I ask my shrink, when you never got that sense of acceptance and security as a kid?

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  My fantasies of being a nuclear family, of going to public school and coming home to my suburban abode, so near to becoming a reality, had all been dashed in a single moment when the “where to next” meeting was called on a weekday morning. Despite the fact that the apartment was well furnished, we sat on the floor on Ray’s hard meditation pillows, pulling into a tight circle, Synanon style. Cupped in her hands, Theresa held a pendulum crystal, her greenish eyes resting benignly on Sara and me as she waited for Ray, who ran a comb over his thick black hair still wet from a recent shower. He took it straight back with quick, efficient strokes. When he was finished, he pushed up his shoulders and rounded his back, demonstrating his fugitive look. “Why do we have to live in another commune?” Sara asked before Ray or Theresa could officially start the meeting. “Why can’t we live in our own home for once?” I added. We had already taken the first fragile steps of integrating into American society, even if Ray and Theresa had begun complaining as of late that it was a capitalistic machine. I didn’t know what capitalism was, but I reasoned to myself that it couldn’t be worse than living in a cult. “Nuclear family living is not up for discussion,” Ray snapped. Since we’d become a family, my dislike for Ray, which started in Synanon, had deepened, compounding almost daily. I found him disingenuous. In public he was friendly, affable, sometimes even a little sappy, especially when he got to talking about his spiritual beliefs, but at home he was curt, tense, and impatient. Somehow, however, he always seemed to listen to Theresa when she confronted him. Her look of exasperation and indignation over Ray’s temper or other irritations in life was almost laughable. Her brows would scrunch together and her normally soft green eyes would roll toward the ceiling when she got mad and had something to say about it. It was like being scolded by a fairy. In any case, she seemed to be the only one who could get through to him. Ray’s harsh answer to my question brought out Theresa’s protective streak. “Ray!” She gave him a stern look, her eyes almost crossing from agitation. “You need to watch your temper. The girls have a right to voice their opinions.” Chastened, Ray looked down and pulled his feet up onto the tops of his thighs. He held out his hands and spread his thick wide fingers in a supplicating gesture. “It’s not up for discussion. That’s all. They need to understand that this is what we’re doing. But you’re right,” he relented. “You’re right,” he said again in a high, parrot-like voice that he and Theresa used when joking around or to diffuse a tense moment. Theresa took a visible breath, directing her next words to Sara and me.