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 Cleanness (2020)

  D. kissed her cheek, and she thanked me again for the flower, which she held with her free hand as she and the writer set off for the metro stop a few blocks away, leaving D. and me alone. He looked at me and smiled, shrugging a little. He’s a great writer, he said, but he’s wrong about this. I didn’t say anything; I wanted to take up the writer’s side of things, but I knew I would lose the argument—I didn’t have any arguments, really, just feelings, he would have laughed at them. And anyway the drums started beating then, and air horns blared, and there was a shift in the crowd, which grew still and then very slowly began to move. D. sighed. Okay, he said, I guess it’s time, and he swung his backpack off his shoulder to take out a large camera, which he hung around his neck. It was his first time at the protests, too, he had followed them in the news but hadn’t come out until tonight, to play the role of journalist, not citizen—he would wander around talking to people, he said, gathering material. There was another blast of horns, and D. invited me to join him. But I would have been in the way, and I wanted to be on my own for a bit, I told him I would find him later. The crowd was moving more decisively now, I stood for a while at the fountain and watched it pass. People held their signs at attention, not using them for shade anymore, and everywhere I saw the word OSTAVKA , resignation, the protesters’ primary demand. A golden retriever twisted among the crowd, unleashed, his tail crazily wagging, until he paused in front of a young girl with Bulgarian flags painted on her cheeks, who patted him once or twice before he rushed off again. I was there to join them, but something held me back. I stood scanning the crowd until I saw, among all the Bulgarian red and green and white, a little rainbow flag, then another, a whole group of five or six people waving them alongside their posterboard signs. I knew them, or most of them, they were activists I had met over the years, and I cut through the crowd toward them. S. greeted me first, tucking his posterboard under his arm to shake my hand. He was in his midtwenties, tall, with longish brown hair he frequently tossed out of his eyes, the gesture of an eighties pop star. He had come in from Varna, where he ran one of the only activist organizations I had heard of outside of Sofia. It had been in the news lately, they had tried to organize what he called an LGBT film festival, though it was really just a few chairs and a DVD player in a café.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  158 Lecture 37: Joyce’s Dubliners Church. He intended these short stories to be a “chapter in the moral history of Ireland,” and in them he ¿ nds Dublin “the center of paralysis” that is the result of isolation and excessive conventionality. The stories are divided into categories: three about childhood, four about adolescence, four about mature life, and three devoted to public life. “The Dead,” the last story, is a kind of summary. A partial analysis of two of the stories can illustrate how they work, helping readers to understand better the others in the collection and to see some of the directions Joyce’s later work would take. “Araby” illustrates the devaluation of plot in favor of internal events. It is about a boy with a crush on a friend’s sister (known simply as “Mangan’s sister”) trying to go to a bazaar in another part of town to bring something back for her. His uncle, with whom he lives, delays him from starting out for the bazaar until nearly nine o’clock at night, and by the time he arrives, the bazaar is closing. The story ends with an epiphany, as the boy stands looking up into the darkness of the great hall and feeling himself “a creature driven and derided by vanity” while his eyes burn with “anguish and anger.” Joyce’s stories seldom feature a great deal of plot; instead, every detail of each story is loaded with a double signi ¿ cance for understanding it. Joyce’s description of the details of the city of Dublin is well-documented, and thousands of literary pilgrims have gone to Dublin to visit the places mentioned in Joyce’s works. Joyce also learned from Flaubert, Ibsen, and Chekhov—especially Ibsen, whom he very much admired—how to use every detail in a symbolic way, so that all of the blind alleys, empty houses, dark rooms and passages, and stairways shrouded in shadow become symbolic of Dublin’s moral blindness, spiritual emptiness, and emotional repression. In this story there are also even more explicit symbols: the boy’s trip to the bazaar to bring back a gift for Mangan’s sister becomes a quest from a medieval romance. The details of the trip, for instance, become obstacles to overcome. The boy’s love for Mangan’s sister likewise becomes a religious dedication: He bears his love for her “like a chalice,” he utters her name “in strange prayers and praises,” the darkening bazaar feels to him like an empty church, and men count money on a silver salver. The combination of these two related sets of symbols suggests a parallel between the boy’s quest

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Looking at them I felt, with a force beyond the figures of my children’s history, beyond any history at all, how ancient the place was; it was a battlefield we sat on, every inch of the ground had been steeped in blood, it must still be in the chemistry of the soil. At the end of the opera, when the scattered bodies had risen for their applause, R. seemed less moved than bemused, looking at me as if to say is that all? The ovations were long and generous, especially for Lakmé, who left the stage half-interred by flowers. Then, before we could rise, an announcement was made that in twenty minutes the spektakul zvuk i svetlina , the sound and light show over Tsarevets, would begin. This was famous enough that R. had heard of it, and he wanted to go, even though it was cold now, the chill had deepened through the performance, and we were both tired after the day. I had been disappointed by the light show the year before, and I wasn’t excited at the thought of sitting through it again; but it was short, fifteen minutes or so, and I resigned myself to it as we began to move with the crowd down the hill. There weren’t any lights to guide us, except for the beams of one or two flashlights some members of the audience had known to bring. There was stumbling and cursing, but also a kind of good cheer, people were laughing and chatting, and in the dark I slipped my arm through R.’s, pressing him against me. I knew he had been disappointed by the opera, which hadn’t brought about the closeness between us I had hoped for, and I felt in some obscure way that I had failed. A group of young people nudged us aside as they passed, raucous, singing melodies from the opera and swinging two-liter plastic bottles of beer: music students from the university, who seemed to know their way well enough in the dark. I let go of R.’s arm as we reached the bottom of the hill, where lights met us again along the stone road, from which it was a five- or ten-minute walk to the observatory point where we would watch the show. Not many of the other operagoers joined us there, they scattered to their cars or set off on foot for home.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  A propitious opportunity appeared when the National Cancer Institute sent out a call for applications for social-behavioral breast cancer research. I applied successfully for a grant enabling me to evaluate the effectiveness of my therapeutic approach to the terminal breast cancer patient. It was a simple, straightforward project. I felt confident that my treatment approach improved the quality of life of the terminally ill patient and that I had only to develop an evaluation component—the administration of questionnaires before members entered the group and at regular intervals thereafter. Notice that I now begin to make more use of the first-person pronoun: “I decided . . . I applied . . . my treatment approach.” As I look back and sift through the ashes of my relationship with Paula, I suspect that these first-person pronouns foreshadowed the corruption of our love. But as I lived through this period, I was unaware of even the most subtle spoilage. I remember only that Paula filled me with light and that I was her rock, the haven for which she had searched before we two were lucky enough to have found each another. Of one thing I am certain: it was shortly after the funded research officially began that things started to go wrong. First small hairline cracks, then crevices began to appear in our relationship. Perhaps the first clear sign that something was amiss was Paula’s telling me one day that she felt exploited by the research project. I thought this a curious remark because I had tried in every way possible to make her role in the project just what she requested: she interviewed all the new candidates for the groups, all women with metastatic breast cancer, and helped in the construction of the evaluation questionnaires. Furthermore, I had made sure she was well paid—far more than the average research assistant and more than she had requested. A few weeks later, in a disturbing conversation, she told me that she felt overworked and yearned for more time for herself. I felt sympathetic and tried to offer suggestions for reducing her frenetic pace. Shortly afterward I submitted to the National Cancer Institute my written report of the first stage of the research. Though I made sure to put Paula’s name first among the list of the research associates, I soon heard a rumor that she was dissatisfied about the amount of credit she had received. I made the mistake of paying this rumor little heed: it seemed uncharacteristic of Paula. A short time later I introduced Dr. Kingsley into one of the groups as a cotherapist—a young female psychologist who, though inexperienced in working with cancer patients, was extraordinarily intelligent, well intentioned, and dedicated. Soon Paula sought me out. “That woman,” she scolded, “is the coldest, most ungiving person I’ve ever encountered. Not in a thousand years will she be able to help any of the patients.”

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  In the past, and even today, it then becomes the universal way of interpreting the text, and interpretations from different cultures are measured by how close they come to the Eurocentric ideal. When the interpretations from the center become confused with biblical truths, questioning interpretations that justify racism, classism, and sexism appears to be a critique of the biblical text itself, something no “true” Christian would dare to do. Those who question certain interpretations constructed within the center of society are charged with being nonbiblical. These next two chapters will explore how the Bible has been and is used and abused to normalize race, class, and gender oppression. Additionally, we will look to some oppressed communities to see how they are able to reclaim the text as a source of their own liberation. We will attempt to discover how Ruvimbo, and so many others like him, can read the Bible through their own eyes so that their faith can lead them to an abundant life in God, beholden to no one except the Creator of all things. JUSTIFYING RACISM How has the Bible been read to justify the social structures of racism? How has the white center interpreted the Bible to justify unequal opportunities? How is the message of belonging to the heavenly body of Christ reconciled with the exclusion of certain individuals from the earthly church body due to their skin pigmentation? Before answering these questions, let us examine a hymn about the slain Lamb of God from the book of Revelation: After I saw these things, I looked and saw a great crowd, impossible to number, out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palms in their hands. And they cry with a great voice saying, “Salvation to our God sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (7:9–10) In this passage, the author, John, has a vision of the kingdom of heaven in all its glory, as the hosts of heaven surround the throne of God. Those who are encircling the throne are so great in number that it becomes impossible to count them. John is impressed with the strength of their collective voices as they sing about God's victories. In this song, Christ's mission of creating a multicultural church is professed, a church ransomed from “every tribe, language, people, and nation.” What John witnessed is the heavenly model for Christians waiting to enter glory. This glimpse of heavenly worship becomes the model by which churches should pattern earthly worship. This pattern began during the Pentecost event at the start of the Christian movement. According to Acts 2:4–11, Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, addressed the crowd that had gathered “from every nation” outside the house where the disciples met. Amazingly, each person heard the message in his or her own language.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Magnolia wanted to learn to listen. Martin, whose life was devoid of people, felt he had nothing to offer anyone. (I tagged that: a slight chance of an opening there.) Carol’s agenda to be more assertive and not to be cowed by conflict was, I was certain, empty; she was only going through the motions of cooperating with me. Besides, to encourage someone’s assertiveness I would need an active group in which I could urge some patients to practice asking for time or to express opinions forthrightly. Today there would be little against which Carol could be assertive. Rosa gave me one tiny ray of hope—her conviction that she was misunderstood and inferior to others. Maybe there was some handhold there; I tagged it too. I made a start on Carol’s fear of assertiveness by asking her to express some criticism, however slight, about the way I was conducting this meeting so far. But she balked, assuring me that she thought I was exceptionally sympathetic and skillful. I turned to Rosa. There was no one else. To my suggestion that she say more about others being more important than she, she described how she had messed up everything—”my education, my relationships, every opportunity in my life.” I tried to bring her comments into the here-and-now (which always increases the power of therapy). “Look around the room,” I suggested, “and try to describe how the other members are more important than you.” “I’ll start with Carol,” she said, warming to the task. “She’s beautiful. I keep looking at her. It’s like looking at a great painting. And I’m jealous of her bod. She’s flat, she’s perfectly proportioned, while me—look at me, I’m fat and bloated. Look at this.” Hereupon Rosa pinched her abdomen to show us an eighth-of-an-inch roll of flesh between her thumb and forefinger. All this was sheer anorexic madness. Rosa, like many anorexics, was so cunning at bundling herself in layers of clothes that it was easy to forget her emaciation. She weighed less than eighty pounds. And it was mad too for her to admire Carol, who was even thinner. A month ago, when I had been on call and paged because Carol had fainted, I had gotten to the ward just as the nurses were carrying her back to her bed. Her hospital gown had opened, exposing her buttocks, through which the heads of her femurs jutted, all but piercing the skin, reminding me of gruesome photographs of survivors liberated from concentration camps. But there was no point in debating Rosa’s assessment that she was fat. Body-image distortions of anorexic patients run too deep—I had challenged them on that issue too many times in too many groups and knew that was an argument I could not win. Rosa continued with her comparisons.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I offered the cherries to him, too, telling him to take the bag, I had had enough. You brought us gifts, D. said, flowers and cherries, you brought us springtime, he said, which made everyone laugh. The writer had already been saying his goodbyes when I arrived. He wouldn’t march tonight, he said, he had come to watch the crowd gather but he had to get home to his daughter, it was her bedtime already. She would be getting cross, he said to me; he spoke the English of the British Institute, of the Cambridge exam. He was devoted to this girl, who was four or five; his Facebook page was full of pictures of her, of the two of them, he was a convert to fatherhood, having come to it late. She came the first couple of days, he said, but after that she refused, she wanted to stay home with her mother and read—she loves to read, he said, you’ve never seen a child who loves so much to read—she says the protests are boring. Smart girl, D. said, they are boring, every night is the same, it’s not really a protest, it’s just a boring party. He spoke as if he were picking up a conversation I had interrupted. They don’t have any ideas, he said, throwing up his hands, what’s the good of a movement without any ideas. No no, the writer said, please, you can’t write that—D. was reporting on the protests for a newspaper in Britain, almost the first international coverage they would receive—please, that can’t be your story. You have to say what the feeling is, the energy, but D. cut him off. The energy, he said, not sounding happy now, what the fuck is that? Look, if it’s just energy, we should hope it stops, right away, energy without a plan can’t build anything, it’s more likely to make things worse. No, the writer said again, but he was already withdrawing, he put his hand on D.’s shoulder but it was a way of ending the conversation, not of drawing him near. I don’t think you’re right, he said, it’s the future they want, you should do what you can to help them. He smiled then, he put his hand on D.’s face, cupping his cheek like a grandfather, a much older man. If you had children you’d see it differently, he said, switching to Bulgarian, you’d support them then. D. scoffed but the writer had already moved on, he reached his hand to D.’s mother, who took him by the arm instead. I’m going too, she said, I’ll walk with you.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  125 Madame Bovary is the ¿ rst full Realist novel in our course. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin had elements of full Realism, but the former is still a Romantic story while the latter makes the narrator its central character and calls a lot of attention to its own medium. Once it was established, the Realist novel became part of the mainstream; most novels published today are still in that tradition. What sets Flaubert’s novel apart from most other Realist novels is its artistry, which has been partly responsible for its immense legacy as well. Despite the objectivity and impersonal narrative strategies, readers still wind up having to decide what to make of Emma. Emma Bovary is a female Don Quixote or Mephistopheles’ grasshopper in Faust; but her dreams can be seen as silly. She is, however, the only one who thinks that there must be more to life than she experiences in her drab environment. Readers need to think about her for themselves—especially given Flaubert’s famed objectivity in presentation. Emma Bovary has had an immense progeny, from the ¿ rst readers of the book (especially women readers) through multiple generations of literary Emmas in masterpieces including Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady, and John O’Hara’s A Rage to Live. The response to Flaubert’s novel over time suggests that it touches some deep and enduring part of our shared history. Ŷ Flaubert, Madame Bovary. Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert. Thorlby, Gustave Flaubert and the Art of Realism. Essential Reading Supplementary Reading 126 Lecture 29: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary 1. It has been suggested that if there is a “villain” in this novel, it is Homais, the pharmacist. What, if anything, is villainous about him? What parts of Emma and Charles’s disasters is he responsible for? Is he deliberately villainous? What do you think Flaubert is saying about Homais and the kind of character he represents in French provincial life in the mid-19 th century? 2. Flaubert’s criticism of petty bourgeois life is pretty astringent and pretty general—but not all-encompassing. Who are the genuinely good characters in the novel? What is it about them that distinguishes them from most of the others and allows them to escape being painted by Flaubert’s satirical brush? Questions to Consider

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Find, in any terrain, exactly those plants that would nourish me and toss them up in a mouthwatering salad. And I actually could have done some of those things. The details began to fade as soon as I got the badges, but I had learned a rough kind of competence and ease in the woods. It was a gift of priceless worth. But I did not guess its value then. Then I was mainly interested in covering myself with enough insignia to look sharp, which, to my way of thinking, I did. The swimming meet was held in the morning. I got bumped after the first couple of heats. This surprised me, though it shouldn’t have—I always got bumped. But I started every meet believing that I was going to win, and ended it believing that I should have won, that I was the best swimmer there. After I got bumped I spent a long time in the shower, feeling low, then took a tour of the other events. The big sensation at this year’s Gathering was the close-order drill competition. It was dominated by a troop from Ballard led by a Scoutmaster who wore a black garrison cap with silver piping and a military-looking jacket with battle ribbons. It was not a uniform I had ever seen before, or would ever see again. His troop wore their pant legs tucked into the tops of gleaming black boots. They also sported black garrison caps. Their boots clapped resoundingly as the troop marched back and forth across the asphalt yard behind the school. The Scoutmaster shouted commands in a harsh voice, watching his troop with a fierce, imperious expression. Our troop didn’t have a drill team and neither did most of the rest. There were only five or six other teams, and each of these was clearly outclassed by the Ballard troop. They were all business, these Ballard boys—crisp, erect, poker-faced, responsive to nothing but their Scoutmaster’s voice. They drew an enormous crowd. I saw Dwight across the yard, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “What a bunch of dildos,” Arthur said. I ignored him. They lost the competition, disqualified for wearing nonregulation caps and boots. The crowd booed the judges; the Ballard troop had won, hands down. Their Scoutmaster went into a rage. He cussed at the judges and threw his cap on the ground, and when the judges didn’t yield he marched his team off the yard and refused to form them up again for the awards ceremony. I saw three boys from the Ballard troop in the cafeteria later on. They looked tough in their uniforms. I joined them at their table and told them how badly I thought they’d been screwed, and they agreed, and we got to talking. Over many such Gatherings and Councils I had developed a bluff conventioneer’s talent for working the floor and “establishing ties” with boys from other troops.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  The last picture she took was of me and Pearl. “Closer!” she yelled. “Come on! Okay, now hold hands. Hold hands! You know, hands? Like on the end of your arms?” She ran up to us, took Pearl’s left hand, put it in my right hand, wrapped my fingers around it, then ran back to her vantage point and aimed the camera at us. Pearl let her hand go dead limp. So did I. We both stared at Norma. “Jeez,” she said. “Dead on arrival.” On the way back to Chinook my mother said, “Dwight, I didn’t know you played an instrument. What do you play?” Dwight was chewing on an unlit cigar. He took it out of his mouth. “A little piano,” he said. “Mainly sax. Alto sax.” Skipper and Norma looked quickly at each other, then looked away again, out the windows. * * * WHEN DWIGHT FIRST invited us to Chinook he’d won me over by mentioning that the rifle club was going to hold a turkey shoot. If I wanted to, he said, I could bring my Winchester along and enter the contest. I hadn’t fired or even held my rifle since we left Salt Lake. Every couple of weeks or so I tore the house apart looking for it, but my mother had it hidden somewhere else, probably in her office downtown. I thought of the trip to Chinook as a reunion with my rifle. During art period I made drawings of it and showed them to Taylor and Silver, who affected disbelief in its existence. I also painted a picture that depicted me sighting down the the barrel of my rifle at a big gobbler with rolling eyes and long red wattles. The turkey shoot was at noon. Dwight and Pearl and my mother and I drove down to the firing range while Skipper went off to work on a car that he was customizing and Norma stayed home to cook. Not until we reached the range did Dwight get around to telling me that in fact there would be no turkey at this turkey shoot. The targets were paper—regulation match targets. They weren’t even giving a turkey away; the prize was a smoked Virginia ham. Turkey shoot was just a figure of speech, Dwight said. He thought everybody knew that. He also let drop, casually, as if the information were of no consequence, that I would not be allowed to shoot after all. It was for grown-ups, not kids. That was all they needed, a bunch of kids running around with guns. “But you said I could.” Dwight was assembling my Winchester, which he apparently meant to use himself. “They just told me a couple of days ago,” he said. I could tell he was lying—that he’d known all along. I couldn’t do a thing but stand there and look at him. Pearl, smiling a little, watched me.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was familiar to me, that intensity, a story from my own adolescence, as was the basking ambivalence with which the other boy received it, how he both invited it and held it off. I had some idea, then, what we would talk about, and why school didn’t offer enough secrecy for us to talk about it there, but I was still curious: he wasn’t a student I was particularly close to, he didn’t stop by my room outside of class, he had never confided in me or sought me out, and I wondered what crisis was bringing him to me now. I was getting annoyed with the booksellers who, sensing my foreignness, kept directing me to their piles of battered American paperbacks, and as G. continued not to appear I wondered if my sacrificed afternoon would go to waste. But then he did appear, standing beside me suddenly, and my annoyance dissolved at the sight of him. He stood out here, with his slightly formal clothes, his feathered hair, though in the States he would have been generic enough, an East Coast aspirant prep school kid, maybe not quite the real thing, especially if he smiled too broadly (as he was careful almost never to do) and revealed a lower set of teeth in un-American disarray. He was friendly enough in greeting me, but as always there was something reserved about him, as if he were deciding whether or not to pronounce a judgment he was on the point of making. He asked me where we should go only to dismiss all my proposals, saying he would take me to a favorite place of his own, and then he set off, walking not beside but in front of me, preventing conversation and as if he were ready to deny any association with me at all. I was hardly a newcomer, I had lived in Sofia for two years, but I had remained a kind of dilettante of the city, and soon—though the center is small and we hadn’t gone far from Slaveykov and Graf Ignatiev, the part of it I knew best—I had no idea where we were.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  The swimming meet was held in the morning. I got bumped after the first couple of heats. This surprised me, though it shouldn’t have—I always got bumped. But I started every meet believing that I was going to win, and ended it believing that I should have won, that I was the best swimmer there. After I got bumped I spent a long time in the shower, feeling low, then took a tour of the other events. The big sensation at this year’s Gathering was the close-order drill competition. It was dominated by a troop from Ballard led by a Scoutmaster who wore a black garrison cap with silver piping and a military-looking jacket with battle ribbons. It was not a uniform I had ever seen before, or would ever see again. His troop wore their pant legs tucked into the tops of gleaming black boots. They also sported black garrison caps. Their boots clapped resoundingly as the troop marched back and forth across the asphalt yard behind the school. The Scoutmaster shouted commands in a harsh voice, watching his troop with a fierce, imperious expression. Our troop didn’t have a drill team and neither did most of the rest. There were only five or six other teams, and each of these was clearly outclassed by the Ballard troop. They were all business, these Ballard boys—crisp, erect, poker- faced, responsive to nothing but their Scoutmaster’s voice. They drew an enormous crowd. I saw Dwight across the yard, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “What a bunch of dildos,” Arthur said. I ignored him. They lost the competition, disqualified for wearing nonregulation caps and boots. The crowd booed the judges; the Ballard troop had won, hands down. Their Scoutmaster went into a rage. He cussed at the judges and threw his cap on the ground, and when the judges didn’t yield he marched his team off the yard and refused to form them up again for the awards ceremony. I saw three boys from the Ballard troop in the cafeteria later on. They looked tough in their uniforms. I joined them at their table and told them how badly I thought they’d been screwed, and they agreed, and we got to talking. Over many such Gatherings and Councils I had developed a bluff conventioneer’s talent for working the floor and “establishing ties” with boys from other troops. I’d pump them for details about the places they lived as if they hailed from Greenland or Samoa. I’d give them my name and collect theirs on pieces of paper that thickened my wallet to a fistlike roundness. I worked my magic on these boys from Ballard and pretty soon it was old

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I don’t think we click sexually. It’s an issue. Or is it? Everyone says that the sex fades anyway, no matter how steamy it is in the beginning, so how important is it, really?” “You tell me,” I prompt her. “You know what I tell myself? ‘Girl, you had your fun. It’s time to grow up. He’s a great guy. Get over yourself.’” Three years after Maria asked me the question, “How important is sex, anyway?” she’s back again. Evidently, she hasn’t yet found her answer. In the beginning she was so taken up by the thrill of security that she was able to postpone dealing with her lack of sexual responsiveness to Nico. She held out some hope that the problem would take care of itself, that one day the block would lift and everything would fall into place. Nico, for his part, is a patient man. He wasn’t going to push, even though he is clearly less than jolly about their anemic sex life. Not pushing the issue is his way of forestalling rejection. In our sessions Maria had always displayed an approach-avoidance attitude to the topic of sex. On the few occasions that she brought it up directly, it was always at the end of the hour, when there was no time left for discussion. One week I decided to keep my foot on the gas and rev up the conversation. “Sex is hard, isn’t it?” I asked her. “What do you mean? Hard to talk about or hard to do?” she answered my question with a question. “Hard to own.” I replied. “It’s easier for me to have sex than to talk about it.” “And with Nico?” “With Nico it’s easier not to have sex than to talk about it.” “Tell me.” “Sex is hard. I don’t want it a lot of the time, which is strange because I’ve always thought of myself as a sexual person. I read about women with low desire and I don’t identify with them, even though it sounds like me lately.” “Was it easier with other men?” “Oh, God, no—but in the past I never had to talk about it. It was never something I had to work on. Either it came naturally and we clicked, or the relationship wasn’t going to last anyway, so why bother? Now I’m with a man I love.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In spite of the sexually saturated media that promise unfettered excitement provided we follow the ten ideas suggested in this week’s issue, there is still some anti-hedonism surrounding domesticated sex. Could it be that we’re inundated with articles about how to make sex hot with our partners because we don’t actually believe it can be hot with our partners? More to the point, could we believe deep down that it’s not supposed to be? Could we believe that regardless of how sexually free we might have been before tying the knot, marriage is no place for the naughtiness of lust? If marriage is about love, as we like to believe, then married sex must be a declaration of love. It has to be meaningful. But, the sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor says: For [married] sex to be “meaningful,” it must always be an expression of love—preferably of lifelong, abiding love—every time we climb into bed with one another. And what an incredible burden that is! It eliminates sex stimulated by a whole array of other emotions and sensations: playful sex and angry sex, quick, “mindless” sex and “naughty” sex. It eliminates, in fact, just about every occasion for having sex there is. After all, who can feel “lifelong, abiding love” that regularly—especially at eleven o’clock at night? Marriage, we’ve been taught, is about commitment, security, comfort, and family. It’s a serious business, a responsible and purposeful enterprise; it’s all the things we need, and all the things we need to do. Play and its playmates (risk, seduction, naughtiness, transgression) are left to fend for themselves outside the solid architecture of our homes. Many people in my field assume that the intensity that shapes the early stages of romance is a sort of temporary insanity, destined to be cured by the rigors of the long haul. Clinicians often interpret the lust for sexual adventure—ranging from simple flirting to infatuation, from maintaining contact with previous lovers to cross-dressing, threesomes, and fetishes—as an infantile fantasy or a fear of commitment. They favor a model of love as a companionate, intimate, collaborative partnership. What we are left with is a relationship that is strong on cooperation and communication but weak on complicity and playfulness. But dispassionate friendship is a problematic ecology for cultivating eroticism. The Day I Got That Ring... Jacqueline and Philip are trying to rekindle the spark they once had. Married for ten years, they are finally emerging from the haze of parenting young children. This fall their youngest son began kindergarten, and his new schedule put some order back into theirs. At the same time, in the past year their friends have gone through an epidemic of divorces. “All these couples we used to hang out with, who got married right around the same time as us, are throwing in the towel,” Philip tells me. “It makes you think about what you value, and it puts you face to face with the fatal flaws in your own relationship.” “And your fatal flaw?”

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  He gazed with chaste ardor at the Lovely Champagne Lady Alice Lon, who smiled the same tremulous smile through every note of every song until she got canned and replaced by the Lovely Champagne Lady Norma Zimmer. He gloated over the Lovely Little Lennon Sisters as if they were his own daughters, and laughed out loud at the cruel jokes Lawrence Welk made at the expense of his slobbering Irish tenor, Joe Feeney. Joe Feeney was the latest addition to the Champagne Ensemble and obviously felt himself on pretty shaky ground, especially after the Lovely Champagne Lady Alice Lon was sent packing and then the Ragtime Piano Virtuoso Big Tiny Little Junior got replaced by the Ragtime Piano Virtuoso Jo Ann Castle, who pummeled the keys like a butcher tenderizing meat. When Joe Feeney sang he held nothing back. He worked himself up to the point of tears, and flecks of saliva flew off his wet lips. You had the feeling that Joe Feeney was singing for his life. About halfway through the show, Dwight would take out his old Conn saxophone and finger the stops in time to the music. Sometimes, when he got really carried away, he would forget himself and blow on it, and a squawk would come out. AFTER NORMA GRADUATED from Concrete High she moved down to Seattle. She worked in an office where she met a man named Kenneth who took her for long drives in his Austin Healey sports car and tried to talk her into getting married. Norma called my mother all the time and asked for advice. What should she do? She still loved Bobby Crow, but Bobby wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t even have a job. Kenneth was ambitious. On the other hand, nobody liked him. He had very strong opinions about everything and was also a Seventh-day Adventist. But that wasn’t it, exactly. Kenneth just didn’t have a very good personality. Then Norma called up and said she’d decided to marry Kenneth. She refused to explain her decision, but insisted it was final. Naturally, she wanted to invite Kenneth to Chinook to meet the family, and it was finally settled that he should come up during Christmas, when Skipper would also be home. Dwight got the spirit that year. He made a wreath for the door and hung pine boughs all over the living room. A couple of weeks before Christmas he and I drove up into the mountains to get a tree. It was early afternoon, a cold light rain falling. Dwight drank from a pint bottle as we scouted the woods. We found a fine blue spruce growing all by itself in the middle of a clearing, and Dwight let me cut it down while he took nips off his bottle and squinted up at the misty peaks all around us. Once I got the tree down we started wrestling it through the dense growth, back toward the fire road where we’d left the car.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  So why not practice complaining? Tell us, what hurts? What do you want to change about yourself?” “Mah health ain’t so good . . . these things crawlin’ around on mah skin. And these legs heah ain’t good. Ah can’t move ’em.” “That’s a start, Magnolia. And I know those are the real problems in your life now. I wish we could do something about those problems here in this group, but groups can’t do that. Try to complain about things we might be able to help you with.” “Ah feel bad about mah house. It’s nasty. Dey can’t, maybe dey won’t, fumigate it right. Ah don’ want to go back there.” “I know you feel bad about your house and your legs and your skin. But those things aren’t you. They are just things about you, not the real, the core you. Look at the center of you. What do you want to change there?” “Well, Ah ain’t real satisfied with mah life. I got mah regrets. Dat what you mean, Doctah?” “Right on.” I nodded vigorously. She continued, “Ah’ve disappointed myself. Ah always wanted to be a teachuh. Dat was mah dream. But Ah never did be one. Sometimes Ah gets down, and Ah think Ah never did nuthin’.” “But Magnolia,” Rosa implored, “look what you’ve done for Darnell or for all those foster kids. You call that nothing?” “Sometime it feel like nuthin’. Darnell ain’t gonna do nuthin’ with his life, ain’t goin’ nowhere. He jes’ like his father.” Rosa broke in. She seemed alarmed—her pupils were enormous. She spoke to me as though I were a judge and she a lawyer pleading Magnolia’s case. “She never had a chance for an education, Dr. Yalom. When she was a teenager her father died and her mother just disappeared for fifteen years.” Suddenly Carol pitched in, also addressing me: “She had to raise her seven brothers and sisters almost alone.” “Not alone. Ah had help—from the pastor, the church, lots of good folk.” Ignoring Magnolia’s disclaimer, Rosa addressed me: “I met Magnolia when we were both in the hospital about a year ago, and once, after we were discharged, I picked her up in my car and we rode around all afternoon—through Palo Alto, Stanford, Menlo Park, up into the hills. Magnolia gave me a tour. She pointed out everything to me, not just the important stuff now but also the way this whole county used to be and all the things that happened thirty or forty years ago on some special spot. That was the best ride I ever had.” “How do you feel about what Rosa said, Magnolia?” Magnolia softened again. “Das good, das good. Dat chile knows I loves her.” “So, Magnolia,” I said, “it looks like, despite everything, despite all the odds stacked against you, you became a teacher after all! And a good teacher.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  What I called detachment from the dead, she called abandonment of her love. I thought I was being the rationalist she needed; she thought I was polluting the purity of her grief. I thought I was leading her back into life; she thought I was forcing her to turn her back on Jack. I thought I was inspiring her to become the existential hero; she thought I was a smug spectator watching her tragedy from a safe grandstand seat. I was stunned by her obstinacy. Why can’t she get it? I wondered. Why can’t she get that Jack is really dead, that his consciousness is extinguished? That it isn’t her fault? That she is not jinxed, that she will not cause my death or the death of the next man she loves? That she is not fated to experience tragedy forever? That she is clinging to crooked beliefs because she so fears the alternative: recognizing that she lives in a universe absolutely indifferent to whether she is happy or unhappy. And she wondered at my obtuseness. Why can’t Irv get it? Why doesn’t he see that he is defacing my memory of Jack, defiling my grief by tracking in grave mud and leaving the shovel in the kitchen? Why can’t he understand that I just want to look out the window at Jack’s grave? That it infuriates me when he tries to yank me away from my heart? That there are times when, despite my need for him, I absolutely have to get away from him, squeeze by him on the stairs, breathe fresh air? That I’m drowning, I’m clinging to the wreckage of my life, and he keeps trying to pry my fingers away? Why can’t he get it that Jack died because of my poisoned love? That evening, as I reviewed the session in my mind, another patient whom I had seen decades earlier came into my mind. Throughout adolescence she had been locked in a long, bitter struggle with her nay-saying father. When she left home for the first time, he drove her to college and, in typical fashion, ruined the trip by grousing the entire time about the ugly, garbage-littered stream by the side of the road. She, on the other hand, saw a beautiful rustic, unspoiled creek.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  At the opposite extreme are the realists. They say that enduring love is more important than hot sex, and that passion makes people do stupid things. It’s dangerous, it creates havoc, and it’s a weak foundation for marriage. In the immortal words of Marge Simpson, “Passion is for teenagers and foreigners.” For the realists, maturity prevails. The initial excitement grows into something else—deep love, mutual respect, shared history, and companionship. Diminishing desire is inescapable. You are expected to tough it out and grow up. As the conversation unfolds, the two camps eye each other with a complex alloy of pity, tenderness, envy, exasperation, and outright scorn. But while they position themselves at opposite ends of the spectrum, both agree with the fundamental premise that passion cools over time. “Some of you resist the loss of intensity, some of you accept it, but all of you seem to believe that desire fades. What you disagree on is just how important the loss really is,” I comment. Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme. Invariably, I’m asked if my book offers a solution. What can people do? Hidden behind this question looms a secret longing for the élan vital, the surge of erotic energy that marks our aliveness. Whatever safety and security people have persuaded themselves to settle for, they still very much want this force in their lives. So I’ve become acutely attuned to the moment when all these ruminations about the inevitable loss of passion turn into expressions of hope. The real questions are these: Can we have both love and desire in the same relationship over time? How? What exactly would that kind of relationship be? The Anchor and the Wave Call me an idealist, but I believe that love and desire are not mutually exclusive, they just don’t always take place at the same time. In fact, security and passion are two separate, fundamental human needs that spring from different motives and tend to pull us in different directions. In his book Can Love Last? the infinitely thoughtful psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell offers a framework for thinking about this conundrum. As he explains it, we all need security: permanence, reliability, stability, and continuity. These rooting, nesting instincts ground us in our human experience. But we also have a need for novelty and change, generative forces that give life fullness and vibrancy. Here risk and adventure loom large. We’re walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other. Ever watch a child run away to explore and then run right back to make sure that Mom and Dad are still there? Little Sammy needs to feel secure in order to go into the world and discover; and once he has satisfied his need for exploration, he wants to go back to his safe base to reconnect.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I’d love it. But then, when I thought more about it, I realized I’d never be able to repay your help, to help you, because you never complain; you never ask for anything. In fact,” I hesitated again, “I’d never get to have the pleasure of offering you something.” “Ah nevah thought about it jes’ like that.” Magnolia nodded thoughtfully. Her smile had vanished. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Maybe what we ought to do here in this group is help you learn to complain. Maybe you need the experience of being listened to.” “Mah momma always said I put myself last.” “I don’t always agree with mothers. In fact, I don’t usually agree with them, but in this case I think your mother was right. So why not practice complaining? Tell us, what hurts? What do you want to change about yourself?” “Mah health ain’t so good . . . these things crawlin’ around on mah skin. And these legs heah ain’t good. Ah can’t move ’em.” “That’s a start, Magnolia. And I know those are the real problems in your life now. I wish we could do something about those problems here in this group, but groups can’t do that. Try to complain about things we might be able to help you with.” “Ah feel bad about mah house. It’s nasty. Dey can’t, maybe dey won’t, fumigate it right. Ah don’ want to go back there.” “I know you feel bad about your house and your legs and your skin. But those things aren’t you. They are just things about you, not the real, the core you. Look at the center of you. What do you want to change there?” “Well, Ah ain’t real satisfied with mah life. I got mah regrets. Dat what you mean, Doctah?” “Right on.” I nodded vigorously. She continued, “Ah’ve disappointed myself. Ah always wanted to be a teachuh. Dat was mah dream. But Ah never did be one. Sometimes Ah gets down, and Ah think Ah never did nuthin’. ” “But Magnolia,” Rosa implored, “look what you’ve done for Darnell or for all those foster kids. You call that nothing?” “Sometime it feel like nuthin’. Darnell ain’t gonna do nuthin’ with his life, ain’t goin’ nowhere. He jes’ like his father.” Rosa broke in. She seemed alarmed—her pupils were enormous. She spoke to me as though I were a judge and she a lawyer pleading Magnolia’s case. “She never had a chance for an education, Dr. Yalom. When she was a teenager her father died and her mother just disappeared for fifteen years.” Suddenly Carol pitched in, also addressing me: “She had to raise her seven brothers and sisters almost alone.” “Not alone.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I realized that he was waiting for permission, that even though nearly everyone in the restaurant was smoking already, he wouldn’t join them unless I gave him my approval first. I smiled at him or nodded and he snatched them up, smiling back as if in apology for his eagerness, and the edges of him softened as he took a first long drag. We spoke a little then, pleasantries mostly and the obligatory questions about college; applications had been sent out and the students were waiting to hear back, and though we were all sick of talking about it, it was the subject we all returned to. Fine, he said, it’s fine, I’m just waiting, and he said that most of the schools he had applied to were in the States, though many students here now look to the EU, where tuition is cheaper and where they have a better chance of being allowed to stay after they graduate. But that conversation was like a cloth already wrung dry, and soon we were sitting in silence. I brought up poetry then; not long before we had read some American poets of the midcentury, and G.’s own poems in response had been a genuine surprise, witty and fluent, revealing depths his other work had never suggested. One of them especially had impressed me, a poem full of the everyday: descriptions of our school, of his classmates and teachers; and also of a sense that in the world he described there was nowhere he could feel at home. It seemed like a kind of invitation, and I suspected that my response to it, excited and full of encouragement, had invited in turn this meeting. He pulled a few pages from his bag and slid them toward me, saying Here, I’ve been working more on these. I was disappointed to see the slightest of the poems he had given me on top, a generic hymn to a feminine ideal, full of exaggerated praise and capitalized pronouns. It was the same draft I had seen already, the page full of my corrections and suggestions, advice I feel obligated to give even unpromising student work. You corrected so much, he said, but you didn’t correct the most important mistake.