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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It wants the flower seeds which were planted last night to be above ground before breakfast. It finds the atmosphere of the fairy tales so congenial, because there great things happen at the waving of the fairy’s wand. This is also the characteristic of the savage, and in lessening degree of every unscientific mind. It understands personal action, and so far as its personal powers will reach, it is willing to help in making things better. For anything beyond its immediate reach and power it trusts in divine intervention. For the slow moulding of institutions by ideas and the slow creation of ideas to justify institutions, for the steady alternation of cause and effect in the development of society, there has been no trained observation. The Church, as we have seen, had the conception of a thorough social regeneration. To that extent religion was prophetic and outran the political intellect by many centuries. But Jesus stood almost alone in the comprehension of the gradualness of moral conquest. The millennial hope was the modern social hope without the scientific conception of organic development. The Church Fathers were lacking in the historical sense for development. The educated men among them had been trained in the Roman rhetorical schools, and the educational system of that day was almost useless for producing historical insight. The air of the miraculous which hung about Christian thought down to modern times was also directly hostile to any scientific comprehension of social facts. When all things happened by devils or angels, how could men understand the real causes of things? In the Bible the Church always had an historical literature which might have opened its eyes to a multitude of social facts, and every time the Bible was in some way freshly comprehended, the social leaven hidden in it did begin to work. All the mediæval evangelical movements which were based on renewed reading of the Bible involved some crude but noble attempt to live a life of social fraternity. When the Bible became the common property of the people through the invention of printing and the translations of the Reformation, it exerted a marked influence on the general social stir of that age. But in general the social enlightenment contained in the Bible was numbed by the dogmatic and ecclesiastical interests of the Church and by the allegorical method of interpretation. Theologians hunted for proof-texts of dogma. Churchmen were interested in the tithing system of the Old Testament because it helped them to exact ecclesiastical taxes, but not in the land system of the Mosaic Law. The allegorical method neutralized the social contents of the Bible by spiritualizing everything.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She listened to him absent-mindedly till the end of luncheon. Accustomed to her half-silences and her worldly wisdom, he asked for nothing better than the usual maternal homilies - ‘Take the 5i brownest crusts. Don’t eat so much new bread. ... You’ve never learnt how to choose a fruit. ...’ All the time, secretly disgruntled, she was reproaching herself, “I must make up my mind what I want! What would I really have liked him to do? Get up on his hind legs and hiss ‘Madame, you have insulted me! Madame, I am not what you take me for!’ I’m responsible, when all’s said and done. I’ve spoon-fed him, I’ve stuffed him with good things. ... Who in the world would have thought that one day he’d want to play the paterfamilias? It never occurred to me! Even supposing it had - as Patron would say, ‘Nature will out.’ Even supposing Patron had accepted Liane’s proposals, his nature would have come out all right if anyone had hinted at the fact in his hearing. But Cheri ... has Cheri’s nature. He’s just Cheri. He’s —” ‘What were you saying, child?* she interrupted her thoughts to ask. ‘I wasn’t listening.’ ‘I was saying that never again — never, do you hear me — will anything make me laugh so much as my scene with Marie-Laure! ’ - “There you are,” Lea concluded her thoughts, “it... it merely made him laugh.” Slowly she rose to her feet, as though tired. Cheri put an arm round her waist, but she pushed it away. f ‘What day is your wedding to be, now I come to think of it?* . ‘Monday week.’ His candour and detachment terrified her. ‘That’s fantastic!* ‘Why fantastic, Nounoune?’ ‘You don’t look as if you were giving it a thought! ’ ‘I’m not,’ he said calmly. ‘ Everything’s been arranged. Ceremony at two o’clock, saving us all the fuss and rush of a wedding breakfast. Instead, a tea-party at Ma’me Peloux’s. After that, sleepers, Italy, the Lakes. ...’ ‘Are the Lakes back in fashion?’ ‘They are. There’ll be villas, hotels, motor drives, restaurants, like Monte Carlo, eh? ’ ‘But the girl! There’s always the girl. ‘Of course there’s the girl. She’s not much, but she’s there!’ ‘And I’m no longer there.’ Cheri had not expected her to say this and showed it. His face became disfigured, and he suddenly turned white about the mouth. He controlled his breath to avoid an audible gasp, and became himself again. ‘Nounoune, you’ll always be there/ * Monsieur overwhelms me/ ‘There’ll always be you, Nounoune ../ and he laughed awkwardly, ‘whenever I need you to do something for me/

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  For instance, the emancipation of the Israelite tribes from galling overwork and cruelty in Egypt, and their conquest of a good tract of land for settlement, is a striking story of social revolt, but it was turned into an allegory of the exodus of the soul from the world and its attainment of the Promised Land beyond the Jordan of death. The great social parable of the good Samaritan was “spiritualized” into an allegory of humanity, which leaves the divine city of Jerusalem and goes down to Jericho, the accursed. It falls into the hands of the devil and his angels, is stripped of the robes of its original righteousness and left half dead in its sins. But Christ finds it, pours wine and oil, the blood of his passion and his Spirit, into its wounds, and commits it to the Church to be cared for till his second advent. This method of interpreting sacred books is no Christian invention. The Jews used the Old Testament, and the Greek philosophers used Homer in the same way. It was an ingenious and swift way of getting ready-made spiritual and doctrinal results from the Bible. But like a sleight-of-hand performer taking ribbons and rabbits out of a silk hat, it never took anything out of the Bible that was not already in the mind of the interpreter, and thus it learned nothing new from the Bible. And by its tendency to seek for spiritual and mystical meanings it belittled and overlooked the homely social significance of the biblical stories and teachings. The Church shared with all the rest of humanity the childlike view of the world, the lack of the historical sense, the inability to understand the facts and laws of social development. The moral intuition awakened by religion made it swifter and bolder to hope for a radical social change than those who travelled by common sense alone; but the prevalent belief in the miraculous and in constant divine interventions counteracted the enlightening effects of its moral vision. These intellectual deficiencies would, perhaps, alone suffice to explain why the Church has never undertaken a clear-eyed and continuous reconstruction of society in any larger way. The outcome of the discussion We set out on this discussion with the proposition that the failure of Christianity to accomplish that task of social regeneration to which it seemed committed by its origins, was not due to the conscious and wise self-limitation of the Church, but to a series of historical causes Some of the most important of these causes I have tried to set forth I think that for any one following this enumeration dispassionately and with previous comprehension of the historical facts alluded to, even so imperfect a résumé can hardly fail make the main proposition at least probable.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘It’s Italy!’ Madame Peloux repeated lyrically. ‘You come back here, your eyes and your heart full of the warm sun of the south, and find you’ve landed at the Pole - at the North Pole. There hasn’t been a flower on the dahlias for the last week. But don’t worry, my precious I Your love-nest will soon be finished. If the architect hadn’t gone down with paratyphoid, it would be ready for you now. I •warned him. If I told him once, I told him twenty times: “Monsieur Savaron ...’” Cheri, who was standing by the window, turned round sharply. ‘ What was the date on that letter? ’ Madame Peloux opened her large child-like eyes: ‘What letter?’ ‘The letter from Lda you showed me.’ ‘She put no date on it, my love; but I got it the night before my last Sunday At-home in October.* ‘I see. And you don’t know who it is?’ ‘Who what is, my paragon?* ‘Whoever it was she went away with, of course.’ Malice clothed Madame Peloux’s stark features. ‘No. Would you believe it, nobody has an idea! Old Lili is in Sicily, and none of my set has a clue! A mystery, an enthralling mystery! However, you know me, I’ve managed to pick up a few scraps here and there ...’ Cheri’s dark eyes expanded: ‘What’s the tattle?’ ‘It seems it’s a young man ...’ Madame Peloux whispered. ‘A young man not ... not particularly desirable, if you know what I mean ... very well made, of course!* She was lying, careful to insinuate the worst. Cheri shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well made, did you say? Don’t make me laugh! My poor Lea! I can see him from here — a hefty little fellow from Patron’s trainingquarters - black hairs on his wrists and clammy hands. ... Well, I’m going back to bed now; you make me tired.’ Trailing his bedroom slippers, he went back to his room, dawdling in the long corridors and on the spacious landings of the house he seemed to be discovering for the first time. He ran into a pot-bellied wardrobe, and was amazed. “Damned if I knew that thing was there. ... Oh, yes, I vaguely remember. ... And who the devil’s this chap?” He was addressing an enlarged photograph, in a deep black frame, hanging funereally near a piece of coloured pottery, equally unfamiliar to Cheri. Madame Peloux had been installed in this house for the last twenty-five years, and had kept every unfortunate result of her had taste and acquisitiveness. ‘Your house looks like the nest of a magpie that’s gone batty,’ was old Lili’s reproachful comment. She herself had a hearty appetite for modem pictures, and still more for modem painters. To this Madame Peloux had replied: T believe in letting well alone.’

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The Church substituted itself for the kingdom of God, and thereby put the advancement of a tangible and very human organization in the place of the moral uplifting of humanity. By that substitution the ethical plane of all actions was subtly but terribly lowered. The kingdom of God can never be advanced by cruelty and trickery; the power of the organized Church can be and has been advanced by persecution and forgery. By that substitution the Church could claim all service and absorb all social energies. It has often been said that the Church interposed between the soul of man and God. It also interposed between man and humanity. It magnified what he did for the Church and belittled what he did for humanity. It made its own organization the chief object of social service. The more churchly Christianity is, the more will the Church be the only sphere of really Christian activity. Only those portions of daily life which are related to the Church will be illuminated by the consciousness of serving God. The rest is secular, natural, permissible; it is not religious and holy. The secular calling in the home, the workshop, or the town is left unhallowed by religion and void of that joy and enthusiasm which come through the consciousness that God loves our work. If a man takes his religion seriously, he will then want to devote his life to the Church. The property of the primitive Church was entirely devoted to the needy. The officers of the Church lived by their own labor unless the service of Christ compelled them to forego their earnings. As Christianity became ecclesiastical, the Church made itself the chief recipient and its clergy the chief beneficiaries of Christian giving. If a man helped a friend in need, he did a moral act. If he gave to the Church, he did a religious act. The Church was able to offer the most enticing eternal rewards to those who gave to her. Thus she discouraged the giving of aid from man to man and encouraged the concentration of giving on herself. To some extent this systematized charity, but it also eliminated the salutary human element from charity, and an ever larger percentage of the gifts never reached the poor. Charitable institutions are apt to use an increasing share of their income for salaries and incidentals. Trustees are apt to regard themselves as the practical owners of the funds they have long administered. The charity of the Church was perhaps the most distinctly social service which it rendered. That service was diverted the more Christianity became churchly in its essence. Since the progress of Christianity was identical with the progress of the Church, the ablest men consumed their strength in building up the power and influence of the Church and in working their way to the places in the Church from which they could direct its policies.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Christian civilization and foreign missions The world is getting small. The shuttle of travel is weaving back and forth. The East and the West have met. We are camping in the front yard of the Hindu and Chinaman, and they are peering over the fence into our back yard. Never before since Islam contended with Christendom for the mastery of the Mediterranean world has the Church been compelled to confront the non-Christian religions as now. The modern movement of foreign missions was the response of the spirit of Christ in the Church to the opportunity presented by the new world-wide commerce. From the outset the missionaries were put to it to explain what relation the white traders who sold the natives rum and brought them contagious diseases bore to the Jesus-religion taught by the missionaries. Trade made the way for missions, but traders also frustrated Christianity. To-day commerce is bearing down on the non-Christian nations with relentless eagerness, breaking down their national independence at the cannon’s mouth, breaking up their customs and tribal coherence, industrializing them, atomizing them, and always making profit on them. At the same time the non-Christian peoples are getting intimate information about Christianity as it works in its own home. They travel through our slums and inspect Packingtown. They see our poverty and our vice, our wealth and our heartlessness, and they like their own forms of misery rather better. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” when applied to religions, reads, “By their civilizations ye shall know them.” The moral prestige of Christian civilization ought to be the most valuable stock in trade for the foreign representatives of Christianity; instead of that it is forcing missionaries into an apologetic attitude. With all the faults that any one can point out in it, the foreign mission work of the modern Church is one of the most splendid expressions of the Christ spirit in history, full of blessing for the Church at home, and fuller of historic importance for the future of mankind than any man can now foresee. Here the Church is really on the fighting-line. But here its sword-arm is paralyzed by the existence of a mass of unchristianized life in its own camp. Our industrial life antagonizes our Christian gospel to non-Christian nations. It even reacts on the faith of the people at home. The Japanese war has furnished a demonstration of the moral qualities of a heathen nation in an object lesson so brilliant that it has gone home with all the world. It has shaken our confidence in the easy moral supremacy of Christianity. We are gaining in respect for the spiritual forces resident in other nations at the same time that we are getting an ever more vivid sense of our evils at home and of our impotence in dealing with them. Thus our unsettled social problems dog the footsteps of the Church wherever it goes.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  wrought out; consequently men manage as best they can with private ownership. To take a simple illustration: on the farm or in a country village the creek is common property for bathing purposes; the " swimmin'-hole " is the communis- tic bath-tub for all who want to refresh their cuticle. As the village grows, the march of the houses drives the bathers farther out; the pervasiveness of the "eternally feminine" robs the boys of their bath ; the primitive communism of the water ceases. Some families now are wealthy enough to install private bath-tubs and have the increased privilege of bathing all the year around. The bulk of the people in the cities have no bathing facilities at all. At last an agitation arises for a public bath. A beginning is made with enclosed river-baths, perhaps, or with shower-baths. At last a plunge- bath is built and opened summer and winter. The bathing instinct of the community revives and increasingly centres about the public bath. The communism of the water has returned. From the communistic swimming-hole to the mar- ble splendor of the communistic bath the way lay through the individualistic tub of the wealthy and the unwashed deprivations of the mass. In the same way there is no need of parks in primitive society, because all nature is open. As cities grow up, the country recedes ; a few are wealthy enough to surround their homes with lawns and trees ; the mass are shut off from nature and suffocate amid brick and asphalt. Then comes the new communal ownership and enjoyment of nature : first the small square in the city ; then the large park on the outskirts; then the distant park on the seashore or by the river and lake ; and finally the state or national reser- vation where wild life is kept intact for those who want to revert to it. Thus we pass from communism to communism WHAT TO DO 395 in our means of enjoyment, and that community will evidently be wisest which most quickly sees that the old and simple means of pleasure are passing, and will provide the corre- sponding means for the more complex and artificial commu- nity which is evolving. The longer it lingers in the era of private self-help, the longer will the plain people be deprived of their heritage, and the more completely will the wealthy minority preempt the means of enjoyment for themselves.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  enterprise; to-day our fire departments are communistic. Schools used to be private; they are now public. Great men formerly had private parks and admitted the public as a matter of favor; the people now have public parks and admit the great men as a matter of right. The right of jurisdiction was formerly often an appurtenance of the great landowners ; it is now controlled by the people. The public spirit and foresight of one of the greatest of all Americans, Benjamin Franklin, early made the postal service of our coun- try a communistic institution of ever increasing magnitude and usefulness. In no case in which communistic ownership has firmly established itself is there any desire to recede from it. The unrest and dissatisfaction is all at those points where the State is not yet communistic. The water-works in most of our cities are owned and operated by the community, and there is never more than local and temporary dissatisfaction about this great necessity of life, because any genuine com- plaint by the people as users of water can be promptly remedied by the people as suppliers of water. On the other hand, the clamor of public complaint about the gas, the electric power and light, and the street railway service, which are commonly supplied by private companies, is incessant and increasing. While the railway lines were competing, they wasted on needless parallel roads enough capital to build a comfortable home for every family in the country. Now that they have nearly ceased to compete, the grievances of their monopoly are among the gravest problems of our national life. The competitive duplication of plant and labor by our express companies is folly, and their exorbitant charges are a drag on the economic welfare and the common comfort of our whole nation. This condition continues not WHAT TO DO 393 because of their efficiency, but because of their sinister in- fluence on Congress. They are an economic anachronism.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next day the Sixth did nothing except cut out my name from the list of the First Eleven: I was told that Jones was going to thrash me but I startled my informant by saying: “I’ll put a knife into him if he lays a hand on me: you can tell him so.” In fact, however, I was half sent to Coventry and what hurt me most was that it was the boys of the Lower School who were coldest to me, the very boys for whom I had been fighting. That gave me a bitter foretaste of what was to happen to me again and again all through my life. The partial boycotting of me didn’t affect me much; I went for long walks in the beautiful park of Sir W. W— near the school. I have said many harsh things here of English school life; but for me it had two great redeeming features: the one was the library which was open to every boy, and the other the physical training of the playing fields, the various athletic exercises and the gymnasium. The library to me for some months meant Walter Scott. How right George Eliot was to speak of him as “making the joy of many a young life.” Certain scenes of his made ineffaceable impressions on me though unfortunately not always his best work. The wrestling match between the Puritan, Balfour of Burleigh and the soldier was one of my beloved passages. Another favorite page was approved, too, by my maturer judgment, the brave suicide of the little atheist apothecary in the “Fair Maid of Perth.” But Scott’s finest work, such as the character painting of old Scotch servants, left me cold. Dickens I never could stomach, either as a boy or in later life. His “Tale of Two Cities” and “Nicholas Nickleby” seemed to me then about the best and I’ve never had any desire since to revise my judgment after reading “David Copperfield” in my student days and finding men painted by a name or phrase or gesture, women by their modesty and souls by some silly catchword; “the mere talent of the caricaturist”, I said to myself, “at his best another Hogarth.” Naturally the romances and tales of adventure were all swallowed whole; but few affected me vitally: “The Chase of the White Horse” by Mayne Reid, lives with me still because of the love-scenes with the Spanish heroine, and Marryat’s “Peter Simple” which I read a hundred times and could read again tomorrow; for there is better character painting in Chucks, the boatswain, than in all Dickens, in my poor opinion. I remember being astounded ten years later when Carlyle spoke of Marryat with contempt. I knew he was unfair, just as I am probably unfair to Dickens: after all, even Hogarth has one or two good pictures to his credit, and no one survives even three generations without some merit.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And make no mistake; you will be paid well not to feel, not to scrutinize the function of your differences and their meaning, until it will be too late to feel at all. You will be paid in insularity, in poisonous creature comforts, false securities, in the spurious belief that the midnight knock will always be upon somebody else’s door. But there is no separate survival. POETRY from The First Cities (1968) For Genevieve, Miriam, Clem, no more words For Marian, Neal, Ed, different ones. A Family Resemblance My sister has my hair my mouth my eyes And I presume her trustless. When she was young, and open to any fever Wearing gold like a veil of fortune on her face, She waited through each rain a dream of light. But the sun came up Burning our eyes like crystal Bleaching the sky of promise and My sister stood Black, unblessed and unbelieving Shivering in the first cold show of love. I saw her gold become an arch Where nightmare hunted Down the porches Of her restless nights. Now through the echoes of denial She walks a bleached side of reason Secret now My sister never waits, Nor mourns the gold that wandered from her bed. My sister has my tongue And all my flesh unanswered And I presume her trustless as a stone. Coal I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open. How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open Like a diamond on glass windows Singing out within the crash of passing sun Then there are words like stapled wagers In a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart— And come whatever wills all chances The stub remains An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat Breeding like adders. Others know sun Seeking like gypsies over my tongue To explode through my lips Like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words Bedevil me. Love is a word another kind of open— As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth’s inside Take my word for jewel in your open light. Now that I Am Forever with Child How the days went While you were blooming within me I remember each upon each— The swelling changed planes of my body— And how you first fluttered, then jumped And I thought it was my heart. How the days wound down And the turning of winter I recall, with you growing heavy Against the wind. I thought Now her hands Are formed, and her hair Has started to curl Now her teeth are done Now she sneezes. Then the seed opened. I bore you one morning just before spring— My head rang like a fiery piston My legs were towers between which A new world was passing. From then

• From Henry and June (1986)

  But all the wonderful things he had said to me about my journal paled now. My confidence wavered. It did not heal me to think what a relative thing beauty is and that each man has his own individual response to it. It is unnatural to be so hurt. Yet I took this hurt into myself and said, “I’m going to bear it. I’m going to live it down, I’m not going to care.” And for a few hours I waved my courage about, until we were undressing that night and Henry said, “I want to watch you undress. I’ve never done that.” I sat on his bed, and I was overcome by a feeling of timidity. I did something to distract his attention from my undressing, and I slipped into the bed. I wanted to cry. Only two moments before, he said, “I have the feeling that I am a very ugly man. I never want to look at myself in the mirror.” And I found something evasive and lovely to say. I told him what I liked about him. I didn’t say to him, “I have needed Eduardo’s beauty these days as never before.” At three-thirty the next day I was in Allendy’s salon, in terrible need of him. I went to Henry and found him at work. He received me with a joyous kiss. We worked together. I sat at my table next to his, looking over fragments to be inserted in my book. I was filled with the strength of his writing. When he got hungry, I offered to cook the dinner. “Let me play at being the wife of a genius.” And I went to the kitchen in my stately rose dress. Henry’s very voice lifts me. I think of his saying, “When I write about you, I will have to write of you as an angel. I cannot put you on a bed.” “But I don’t behave like an angel. You know I don’t.” “I know, yes, I know. You’ve tired me out these past days. You’re a sexual angel, but you’re an angel just the same. Your sensuality doesn’t convince me.” “I’ll punish you for that,” I said. “From now on I’ll behave like an angel.” Two hours later Fred has gone to work and Henry is kissing me in the kitchen. I want to play at resisting him, but even a kiss on my neck melts me. I say no, but he puts his hands between my legs. He charges me like a bull. When we lie quiet, I love him still, his hands, his wrists, his neck, his mouth, the warmth of his body, and the sudden leaping of his mind. Afterwards we sit eating and talking about June and Dostoevsky while the cock crows. That Henry and I can sit and talk about our love of June, about her grandiose moments, is to me the greatest of victories.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “‘Nothing of the sort, he lay there, jiggling like’, (“I guessed what she meant”, said Quain, “the poor devil in a blue funk was frigging himself to get a cock-stand.”) ‘I thought for some time’, Mrs. Carlyle went on, ‘one moment I wanted to kiss and caress him; the next moment I felt indignant. Suddenly it occurred to me that in all my hopes and imaginings of a first night, I had never got near the reality: silent, the man lay there jiggling, jiggling. Suddenly I burst out laughing: it was all too wretched! too absurd!’ “‘At once he got out of bed with the one scornful word ‘Woman!’ and went into the next room: he never came back to my bed. “‘Yet he’s one of the best and noblest men in the world and if he had been more expansive and told me oftener that he loved me, I could easily have forgiven him any bodily weakness; silence is love’s worst enemy and after all he never really made me jealous save for a short time with Lady Ashburnham. I suppose I’ve been as happy with him as I could have been with anyone yet—’ “That’s my story”, said Quain in conclusion, “and I make you a present of it: even in the Elysian Fields I shall be content to be in the Carlyles’ company. They were a great pair!” Just one scene more. When I told Carlyle how I had made some twenty-five hundred pounds in the year and told him besides how a banker offered me almost the certainty of a great fortune if I would buy with him a certain coal-wharf at Tunbridge Wells (it was Hamilton’s pet scheme), he was greatly astonished. “I want to know”, I went on, “if you think I’ll be able to do good work in literature; if so I’ll do my best. Otherwise I ought to make money and not waste time in making myself another second-rate writer.” “No one can tell you that”, said Carlyle slowly, “You’ll be lucky if you reach the knowledge of it yourself before ye die! I thought my Frederic was great work; yet the other day you said I had buried him under the dozen volumes and you may be right; but have I ever done anything that will live?—” “Sure”, I broke in, heartsore at my gibe, “Sure, your French Revolution must live and the “Heroes and Hero Worship”, and “Latter Day Pamphlets” and, and—” “Enough”, he cried, “You’re sure?” “Quite, quite sure”, I repeated. Then he said, “You can be equally sure of your own place; for we can all reach the heights we are able to oversee.” [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AFTERWORD TO THE FIRST VOLUME OF MY LIFE’S STORY. -------------- I had hardly written “Finis” at the end of this book when the faults in it, faults both of omission and commission, rose in swarms and robbed me of my joy in the work.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The conviction came to me in a flash: I was ugly with irregular features, sharp eyes and short squat figure: the certainty overpowered me: I had learned before that I was too small to be a great athlete, now I saw that I was ugly to boot: my heart sank: I can not describe my disappointment and disgust. Jessie asked; what was the matter and at length I told her. She wouldn’t have it: “You’ve a lovely white skin”, she cried, “and you’re quick and strong: no one would call you ugly!—the idea!” But the knowledge was in me indisputable, never to leave me again for long. It even led me to some erroneous inferences then and there: for example, it seemed clear to me that if I had been tall and handsome like Paris, Jessie would have given herself to me in spite of her sister; but further knowledge of women makes me inclined to doubt this: they have a luscious eye for good looks in the male, naturally; but other qualities, such as strength and dominant self-confidence have an even greater attraction for the majority, especially for those who are richly endowed sexually and I am inclined to think that it was her sister’s warnings and her own matter-of-fact hesitation before the irrevocable that induced Jessie to withhold her sex from complete abandonment. But the pleasure I had experienced with her, made me keener than ever, and more enterprising. The conviction of my ugliness, too, made me resolve to develop my mind and all other faculties as much as I could. Finally, I saw Jessie home and had a great hug and long kiss and was told she had had a bully afternoon and we made another appointment. I worked at boot-blacking every morning and soon got some regular customers, notably a young, well-dressed man who seemed to like me. Either Allison, or he himself, told me his name was Kendrick and he came from Chicago. One morning he was very silent and absorbed. At length I said, “Finished” and “Finished”, he repeated after me: “I was thinking of something else”, he explained. “Intent”, I said smiling. “A business deal”, he explained, “but why do you say intent?” “The Latin phrase came into my head”, I replied without thinking, “‘Intentique ore tenebant’, Vergil says.” “Good God!” he cried, “fancy a bootblack quoting Vergil. You’re a strange lad, what age are you?” “Sixteen”, I replied. “You don’t look it”, he said, “but now I must hurry; one of these days we’ll have a talk.” I smiled, “Thank you, Sir”, and away he hastened.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next day by an unanimous vote of the Faculty, I was expelled from the University and was free to turn all my attention to law. Judge Stevens told me he would bring action on my behalf against the Faculty if I wished and felt sure he’d get damages and reinstate me. But the University without Smith meant less than nothing to me and why should I waste time fighting brainless bigots? I little knew then that that would be the main work of my life; but this first time I left my enemies the victory and the field, as I probably shall at long last. I made up my mind to study law and as a beginning induced Barker of Barker & Sommerfeld to let me study in his law office. I don’t remember how I got to know them; but Barker, an immensely fat man, was a famous advocate and very kind to me for no apparent reason. Sommerfeld was a tall, fair, German-looking Jew, peculiarly inarticulate, almost tongue-tied, indeed, in English; but an excellent lawyer and a kindly, honest man who commanded the respect of all the Germans and Jews in Douglas County partly because his fat little father had been one of the earliest settlers in Lawrence and one of the most successful tradesmen. He kept a general provision store and had been kind to all his compatriots in their early struggling days. It was an admirable partnership: Sommerfeld had the clients and prepared the briefs; while Barker did the talking in court with a sort of invincible good humor which I never saw equalled save in the notorious Englishman, Bottomley. Barker before a jury used to exude good-nature and commonsense and thus gain even bad cases. Sommerfeld, I’ll tell more about in due time. A little later I got depressing news from Smith: his cough had not diminished and he missed our companionship: there was a hopelessness in the letter which hurt my very heart: but what could I do? I could only keep on working hard at law, while using every spare moment to increase my income by adding to my hoardings in two senses. One evening I almost ran into Lily. Kate was still away in Kansas City, so I stopped eagerly enough to have a talk, for Lily had always interested me. After the first greetings she told me she was going home: “they are all out, I believe”, she added. At once I offered to accompany her and she consented. It was early in summer but already warm, and when we went into the parlor and Lily took a seat on the sofa, her thin white dress defined her slim figure seductively. “What do you do?” she asked mischievously, “now that dear Mrs. Mayhew’s gone? You must miss her!” she added suggestively. “I do,” I confessed boldly; “I wonder if you’d have pluck enough to tell me the truth?” I went on.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I am feeling more like an Audre I recognize, thank the goddess for Dr. Rosenberg, and for Dagmar for introducing me to her. I’ve been reading Christa Wolf’s The Search for Christa T., and finding it very difficult. At first I couldn’t grapple with it because it was just too painful to read about a woman dying. Dagmar and a number of the women here in Berlin say the author and I should meet. But now that I’m finished I don’t know if I want to meet the woman who wrote it. There is so much pain there that is so far from being felt in any way I recognize or can use, that it makes me very uncomfortable. I feel speechless. But there is one part of the book that really spoke to me. In chapter 5, she talks about a mistaken urge to laugh at one’s younger self’s belief in paradise, in miracles. Each one of us who survives, she says, at least once in our lifetime, at some crucial and inescapable moment, has had to absolutely believe in the impossible. Of course, it occurs to me to ask myself if that’s what I’m doing right now, believing in the impossible by refusing a biopsy. It’s been very reassuring to find a medical doctor who agrees with my view of the dangers involved. And I certainly don’t reject nondamaging treatment, which is why I’m taking these shots, even though I hate giving myself injections. But that’s a small price balanced against the possibility of cancer. June 20, 1984 Berlin I didn’t go to London because I loved book fairs, but because the idea of the First International Feminist Bookfair excited me, and in particular, I wanted to make contact with the Black feminists of England. Well, the fact remains: the First International Feminist Bookfair was a monstrosity of racism, and this racism coated and distorted much of what was good, creative, and visionary about such a fair. The white women organizers’ defensiveness to any question of where the Black women were is rooted in that tiresome white guilt that serves neither us nor them. It reminded me of those old tacky battles of the seventies in the States: a Black woman would suggest that if white women wished to be truly feminist, they would have to examine and alter some of their actions vis-à-vis women of Color. And this discussion would immediately be perceived as an attack upon their very essence. So wasteful and destructive.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next day he came and assured me he had promised monies on the strength of my promise, had bought a hundred crates, too, of chickens to ship to Denver and had already an offer from the Mayor of Denver at double what he had given. I read the letters and wire he showed me and let him have four hundred dollars, which drained me and kept me poor for months; indeed, till I brought off the deal with Dingwall which I am about to relate which put me on my feet again in comfort. I should now tell of Willie’s misadventure with his car-load of chickens: it suffices here to say that he was cheated by his purchaser and that I never saw a dollar of all I had loaned him. Looking back I understand that it was probably the slump of 1873 that induced the Mayhews to go to Denver; but after they left, I was at a loose end for some months. I could not get work though I tried everything: I was met everywhere with the excuse: “hard times: hard times!” At length I took a place as waiter in the Eldridge House, the only job I could find that left most of the forenoon free for the University. Smith disliked this new departure of mine and told me he would soon find me a better post, and Mrs. Gregory was disgusted and resentful—partly out of snobbishness, I think. From this time on I felt her against me and gradually she undermined my influence with Kate: I soon knew I had fallen in public esteem too, but not for long. One day in the fall Smith introduced me to a Mr. Rankin, the cashier of the First National Bank, who handed over to me at once the letting of Liberty Hall, the one hall in the town large enough to accommodate a thousand people: it had a stage, too, and so could be used for theatrical performances. I gave up my work in the Eldridge House and instead used to sit in the box-office of the Hall from two every afternoon till seven, and did my best to let it advantageously to the advance agents of the various travelling shows or lecturers. I received sixty dollars a month for this work and one day got an experience which has modified my whole life, for it taught me how money is made in this world and can be made by any intelligent man. One afternoon the advance agent of the Hatherly Minstrels came into my room and threw down his card. “This old one-hoss shay of a town”, he cried, “should wear grave-clothes.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  He was always writing to me to come to visit him and on my return from Philadelphia, in 1875 I think, I stopped at Columbus and spent a couple of days with him. As soon as he heard that I had gone to Europe and had reached Paris, he wrote to me that he wished I had asked him to come with me and so I wrote setting forth my purpose and at once he threw up his good prospects of riches and honor and came to me in Paris. We lived together for some six months: he was a tall, strong fellow, with pale face and gray eyes; a good student, an honorable, kindly, very intelligent man; but we envisaged life from totally different sides and the longer we were together, the less we understood each other. In everything we were antipodes; he should have been an Englishman for he was a born aristocrat with imperious, expensive tastes, while I had really become a Western American, careless of dress or food or position, intent only on acquiring knowledge and, if possible, wisdom in order to reach greatness. The first evening we dined at Marguerite’s and spent the night talking and swapping news. The very next afternoon Ned would go into Paris and we dined in a swell restaurant on the Grand Boulevard. A few tables away a tall, splendid-looking brunette of perhaps thirty was dining with two men: I soon saw that Ned and she were exchanging looks and making signs. He told me he intended to go home with her: I remonstrated but he was as obstinate as Charlie, and when I told him of the risks he said he’d never do it again; but this time he couldn’t get out of it. “I’ll pay the bill at once”, I said, “and let’s go!” but he would not, desire was alight in him and a feeling of false shame hindered him from taking my advice. Half an hour later the lady made a sign and he went out with the party and when she entered her Victoria, he got in with her; the pair on the sidewalk, he said, bursting into laughter as he and the woman drove away together. Next morning he was back with me early, only saying that he had enjoyed himself hugely and was not even afraid. Her rooms were lovely, he declared; he had to give her a hundred francs: the bath and toilette arrangements were those of a queen: there was no danger. And he treated me to as wild a theory as Charlie had cherished: told me that the great _cocottes_ who make heaps of money took as much care of themselves as gentlemen. “Go with a common prostitute and you’ll catch something; go with a real topnotcher and she’s sure to be all right!” And perfectly at ease he went to work with a will.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  26Adoctor to whom I occasionally talk suggests that I have made an inadequate adjustment to aging. Wrong, I want to say. In fact I have made no adjustment whatsoever to aging. In fact I had lived my entire life to date without seriously believing that I would age. I had no doubt that I would continue to wear the red suede sandals with four-inch heels that I had always preferred. I had no doubt that I would continue to wear the gold hoop earrings on which I had always relied, the black cashmere leggings, the enameled beads. My skin would develop flaws, fine lines, even brown spots (this, at seventy-five, was what passed for a realistic cosmetic assessment), but it would continue to look as it had always looked, basically healthy. My hair would lose its original color but color could continue to be replaced by leaving the gray around the face and twice a year letting Johanna at Bumble and Bumble highlight the rest. I would recognize that the models I encountered on these semiannual visits to the color room at Bumble and Bumble were significantly younger than I was, but since these models I encountered on my semiannual visits to the color room at Bumble and Bumble were at most sixteen or seventeen there could be no reason to interpret the difference as a personal failure. My memory would slip but whose memory does not slip. My eyesight would be more problematic than it might have been before I began seeing the world through sudden clouds of what looked like black lace and was actually blood, the residue of a series of retinal tears and detachments, but there would still be no question that I could see, read, write, navigate intersections without fear. No question that it could not be fixed. Whatever “it” was. I believed absolutely in my own power to surmount the situation. Whatever “the situation” was.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Both Brooke and Caitlin were relieved to have lost their virginity when and how they did: too many of their friends, they said, were panicked about unloading “it” before college and, as a result, had made hasty choices that led to unpleasant experiences. College had loomed as a deadline for most of the girls I spoke with: being tagged as a prude freshman year seemed a greater threat to them than being labeled a slut. Better to get it over with, have sex with someone, rather than risk being seen as an “inexperienced freak” or, worse, as “too ugly to fuck.” In general, young people overestimate how many of their peers have had sex, how many times they’ve had sex, and how many partners they’ve had (not to mention whether any of that sex has felt good). One in four eighteen-year-olds hasn’t had intercourse. However, unless they’re religious, most don’t advertise their status—some even lie about it. Christina, who as a college freshman still expected to remain abstinent until marriage, felt she had to perpetually defend that choice, putting it out there right away when she met a guy at a party, to avoid any pressure or assumption. “But if you think it through,” said Brooke, “it’s ridiculous what happens. I mean, you’re seventeen, you’re graduating high school, and you’re so worried about going to college a virgin that you get drunk and have sex with some random guy. It’s not like that prepares you for anything. It’s not like it gives you all this experience or understanding of sex. People, myself included, talk like just doing the act changes you . . .” “Oh my God!” Annie broke in. She’d had intercourse the first time last year, at age nineteen, with her longtime boyfriend. “I thought it would be this whole new world after I had sex the first time! I had learned at school and at church that when you find the ‘right person’ and you’re really in love and you have sex, you will be transformed. Like, this veil would be lifted. But I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t feel like a new person. There were no birds chirping or bells ringing. And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe it wasn’t the right time after all, or maybe we didn’t do it right.’ I felt like I’d been sold a bill of goods.”

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  “I mean, I had a good time,” she continued, “but it wouldn’t be about me. My orgasm was never a given. It was not as important. It was not part of the deal.” Two weeks after their first hookup, Connor asked Holly to be his girlfriend. She was thrilled. He never pressured her to have intercourse, she said; he told her to just tell him when she was ready. A month later, she was. She thought it would be “like the movies: this magical and beautiful moment.” She even decorated her room with Christmas lights for the occasion. Instead, it hurt. A lot. “I made him stop. We kissed for a little while and cuddled and were cute with each other. And then I said we could try again. It lasted a little longer, but it still hurt too much.” Intercourse may have been a disappointment for Holly, but it still felt like an accomplishment, a milestone. After Connor left, she strutted into a friend’s room blasting the song “I Just Had Sex” on her iPod (a somewhat ironic choice, given that the lyrics—“I just had sex, / And it felt so good, / A woman let me put my penis inside of her”—describe a guy who is comically oblivious to his partner). “I was like, I feel so cool!” she said. “I feel like such a grown-up! And I had shared this special moment with a guy who I liked and trusted and who I had feelings for and who had feelings for me. Also, I was sober—that was very important to me. I was not going to have sex the first time drunk. I wanted to be able to experience it.” Connor broke up with her two days later. This was a boy who had compared their relationship to his parents’ (who had also begun dating each other the second month of freshman year). He had talked about how much he’d miss her over winter break, which was still over a month away. He had asked her to be his girlfriend. Holly was devastated. She left school two days early for the Thanksgiving break, needing to get away. When her parents picked her up at the train station, her mom looked her up and down. “You lost your virginity,” she said. “I asked her how she knew,” Holly told me. “And she said, ‘Look at you. You’re a mess! I hope that’s a good lesson for you about not giving your body away to just anyone.’”