Excitement

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 The Erotic Engine (2011)

  The real draw of the VCR would turn out to be the rental and purchase of factory-produced videotapes. But even this was not an immediate mainstream success. People liked going out to the movies. A select group of cineastes, though, were interested in a very specific type of movie that they could only fully enjoy with a solo viewing. So it was that pornographic movies led the VCR revolution. They were not quite the first out the door, but they were the ones that threw it open wide and changed forever the nature of media consumption. They proved the market. In 1976, a bright light named Andre Blay approached the major Hollywood studios with a proposal to release their movies on prepackaged videotapes for home consumption. His initial mail-order business did not deal in adult films, though it did offer the advantage of supplying uncut, unedited versions of Hollywood films that were unavailable on television. His business demonstrated sufficient demand for prepackaged videos— within a year, videos were driving VCR sales rather than the other way around—that retailers were willing to buy in. “Arthur Morowitz, a New York video distributor … took the next logical step,” writes Greenberg. “In May 1978, Morowitz opened his first Video Shack store at 49th and Broadway with an inventory of 600 titles (the majority X-rated) and no VCRs.” While mainstream movie theatres saw the VCR as a threat to their trade, porn cinemas became early adopters, savvily expanding their business into the home market to compensate for their declining cinema revenues. Porn consumers exploded the demand for videotape and machine rentals. They were a ready-made market comprising individuals who wanted to watch adult movies in the privacy of their own home. In 1979, less than one per cent of American households owned a videocassette recorder. How could VCR companies survive with such dismal market penetration? It was thanks to pornography consumers, who were willing to pay top dollar for both the machines and the tapes. That premium helped offset the small size of the market, and keep it viable for everyone from VCR manufacturers to local rental stores. “Every independent video store—this was before Blockbuster got the whole thing for themselves—they had a back room full of porn,” said Glasser. “I remember in the early seventies, I saw people with their 16-mm or 8-mm films of porn they showed in their apartments. So obviously, if you get a nice videocassette format for the masses, hey, there’s the porn. It’s a much easier way to watch it and to get it.”

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  This aptitude of society for setting itself up as a god or for creating gods was never more apparent than during the first years of the French Revolution. At this time, in fact, under the influence of the general enthusiasm, things purely laïcal by nature were transformed by public opinion into sacred things: these were the Fatherland, Liberty, Reason.[690] A religion tended to become established which had its dogmas,[691] symbols,[692] altars[693] and feasts.[694] It was to these spontaneous aspirations that the cult of Reason and the Supreme Being attempted to give a sort of official satisfaction. It is true that this religious renovation had only an ephemeral duration. But that was because the patriotic enthusiasm which at first transported the masses soon relaxed.[695] The cause being gone, the effect could not remain. But this experiment, though short-lived, keeps all its sociological interest. It remains true that in one determined case we have seen society and its essential ideas become, directly and with no transfiguration of any sort, the object of a veritable cult. All these facts allow us to catch glimpses of how the clan was able to awaken within its members the idea that outside of them there exist forces which dominate them and at the same time sustain them, that is to say in fine, religious forces: it is because there is no society with which the primitive is more directly and closely connected. The bonds uniting him to the tribe are much more lax and more feebly felt. Although this is not at all strange or foreign to him, it is with the people of his own clan that he has the greatest number of things in common; it is the action of this group that he feels the most directly; so it is this also which, in preference to all others, should express itself in religious symbols. But this first explanation has been too general, for it is applicable to every sort of society indifferently, and consequently to every sort of religion. Let us attempt to determine exactly what form this collective action takes in the clan and how it arouses the sensation of sacredness there. For there is no place where it is more easily observable or more apparent in its results. III The life of the Australian societies passes alternately through two distinct phases.[696] Sometimes the population is broken up into little groups who wander about independently of one another, in their various occupations; each family lives by itself, hunting and fishing, and in a word, trying to procure its indispensable food by all the means in its power. Sometimes, on the contrary, the population concentrates and gathers at determined points for a length of time varying from several days to several months. This concentration takes place when a clan or a part of the tribe[697] is summoned to the gathering, and on this occasion they celebrate a religious ceremony, or else hold what is called a corrobbori[698] in the usual ethnological language.

• From The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915)

  Among the Warramunga, the final rite presents some rather particular characteristics. There seems to be no shedding of blood here, but the collective effervescence is translated in another manner. Among his people, before the body is definitely interred, it is exposed upon a platform placed in the branches of a tree; it is left there to decompose slowly, until nothing remains but the bones. Then these are gathered together and, with the exception of the humerus, they are placed inside an ant-hill. The humerus is wrapped up in a bark box, which is decorated in different manners. The box is then brought to camp, amid the cries and groans of the women. During the following days, they celebrate a series of totemic rites, concerning the totem of the deceased and the mythical history of the ancestors from whom the clan is descended. When all these ceremonies have been terminated, they proceed to the closing rite. A trench one foot deep and fifteen feet long is dug in the field of the ceremony. A design representing the totem of the deceased and certain spots where the ancestor stopped is made on the ground a little distance from it. Near this design, a little ditch is dug in the ground. Ten decorated men then advance, one behind another, and with their hands crossed behind their heads and their legs wide apart they stand astraddle the trench. At a given signal, the women run from the camp in a profound silence; when they are near, they form in Indian file, the last one holding in her hands the box containing the humerus. Then, after throwing themselves on the ground, they advance on their hands and knees, and pass all along the trench, between the legs of the men. The scene shows a state of great sexual excitement. As soon as the last woman has passed, they take the box from her, and take it to the ditch, near which is an old man; he breaks the bone with a sharp blow, and hurriedly buries it in the debris. During this time, the women have remained at a distance, with their backs turned upon the scene, for they must not see it. But when they hear the blow of the axe, they flee, uttering cries and groans. The rite is accomplished; the mourning is terminated.[1257] II

• From Little Women (1868)

  If we do so, you just say to us, as old Chloe did in Uncle Tom , 'Tink ob yer marcies, chillen!' 'Tink ob yer marcies!'" added Jo, who could not, for the life of her, help getting a morsel of fun out of the little sermon, though she took it to heart as much as any of them. CHAPTER FIVE BEING NEIGHBORLY "What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?" asked Meg one snowy afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack, and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other. "Going out for exercise," answered Jo with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It's cold and dull out, and I advise you to stay warm and dry by the fire, as I do," said Meg with a shiver. "Never take advice! Can't keep still all day, and not being a pussycat, I don't like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I'm going to find some." Meg went back to toast her feet and read Ivanhoe , and Jo began to dig paths with great energy. The snow was light, and with her broom she soon swept a path all round the garden, for Beth to walk in when the sun came out and the invalid dolls needed air. Now, the garden separated the Marches' house from that of Mr. Laurence. Both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still country-like, with groves and lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two estates. On one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls and the flowers, which then surrounded it. On the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson. To Jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed. She had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the Laurence boy, who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to begin.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  After a year of Wednesday nights, I knew the Pear Tree Story off by heart and had added many new words to my vocabulary such as ego , spirit , chakra , and negative energy and learned their group-specific definitions via discussions each week. With a little trepidation but more excitement, I began participating as well in the weekend workshops that Limori held locally. The first one I attended was in her home in Port Moody. There were perhaps twenty of us there, seated around her living room in a circle of chairs, with the other living room furniture moved to other parts of the house. There was never a formal agenda or structure to these workshops; Limori was not teaching a methodology that could be replicated or a paradigm that could be memorized. She was acting at the behest of God, we believed, and therefore we were willing to let her lead us wherever she said God wanted us to go. We spent some of the time during the workshops meditating, and would report afterwards on what we’d “seen” or felt or experienced during the mediation. Limori would then, from her seat at the top of the circle, comment on our experience and explain what her spirit guides said it signified. The meditations themselves were often guided; that is, someone in the group would lead us through a visualization (in the early days it was usually Limori but later others of us were granted permission to do this) and then we might spend some time in silence. The meditations could last up to an hour, but were more often thirty or forty minutes long. We were there to learn at the feet of someone we believed was a spiritual master and had God’s ear. To that end, during these workshops, God was available through Limori via her spirit guide, Azeen, to provide us with guidance about changes we needed to make in our lives and personal selves in order to better serve Him and strengthen our ability to be spiritually “clear.” Unspoken was the eternal hope that we would eventually be able to receive His guidance ourselves. At some point during the first day of the workshop, either before or after a meditation, Limori would look around the room until eventually her gaze would fall on one person. She would make a few introductory enquiries about that person’s life, both inner and outer, until she discovered an “ego position” that the person was dealing with. Then the rest of us would sit back, relieved that the spotlight had momentarily fallen on someone else and, like an audience at a tennis match, our heads would swivel back and forth between Limori and her chosen subject as they talked. Or, rather, as the person confessed and Limori gave them God’s guidance about what the root cause of their particular problem was and what they should do about it. During the Saturday afternoon of my first workshop, Limori’s eyes land on Gary.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Fitted with huge picture windows, it offered a spectacular view of the lake and its far shores. The lodge was furnished gracefully but without flash. Limori had a way of creating physical beauty wherever she went, even in these somewhat primitive circumstances. Limori and Matthew’s bedroom was on the far side of the living room. Alice and her then-husband John slept in a cabin nearby that, before the arrival of electricity, had been an icehouse. We were each assigned a cabin to share with two or three others. There were about twenty of us; the five men stayed in one cabin and the women in the others. The cabins were without running water or electricity, and each had a woodstove for heat and a nearby outhouse. During that first workshop, all twenty of us shared the one bathroom in the lodge. We were each given a five-minute window every other day to shower so that we would not overwhelm the septic system. In later years, as the business of the lodge expanded, a shower house would be built to service the cabins. Throughout the late afternoon and early evening, cars bearing fellow group members arrived. The passengers would disembark and receive the same welcome and tour that we’d had. Some of Limori’s followers lived in BC’s interior, and those of us from Vancouver saw them only at workshops such as this. It was a bit like a reunion as everyone slowly gathered in the living room, even though some of us had seen each other just a few days earlier. As the crowd grew, a feeling of anticipation began to permeate the atmosphere, and I became conscious of my curiosity about what would occur this week. Once everyone had arrived, we were all seated in the living room and without instruction we grew quiet, ready to listen to whatever Limori and her “spirit guides” had to offer us. She was there in regal splendour as usual, dressed in a custom-made silk skirt and matching top, while the rest of us were mostly in jeans. As the chatter in the room slowly petered out, she clasped her hands around her belly, closed her eyes and made the small nodding motions and quiet, private murmurs of assent to the spirit voices she was listening to that we had come to learn meant she was “tuning in.” She would often laugh at something Spirit had said and then open her eyes, still chuckling, and let us in on the joke she and Azeen were sharing. A few guidelines were outlined for the week, such as the instruction that no one was to leave the property. Limori emphasized that she had drawn in good spirits to protect us while we were here but if we strayed past the property boundaries we could break the protective seal at the property line and endanger ourselves and everyone else.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "If I tell mine, will you tell yours?" "Yes, if the girls will too." "We will. Now, Laurie." "After I'd seen as much of the world as I want to, I'd like to settle in Germany and have just as much music as I choose. I'm to be a famous musician myself, and all creation is to rush to hear me. And I'm never to be bothered about money or business, but just enjoy myself and live for what I like. That's my favorite castle. What's yours, Meg?" Margaret seemed to find it a little hard to tell hers, and waved a brake before her face, as if to disperse imaginary gnats, while she said slowly, "I should like a lovely house, full of all sorts of luxurious things—nice food, pretty clothes, handsome furniture, pleasant people, and heaps of money. I am to be mistress of it, and manage it as I like, with plenty of servants, so I never need work a bit. How I should enjoy it! For I wouldn't be idle, but do good, and make everyone love me dearly." "Wouldn't you have a master for your castle in the air?" asked Laurie slyly. "I said 'pleasant people', you know," and Meg carefully tied up her shoe as she spoke, so that no one saw her face. "Why don't you say you'd have a splendid, wise, good husband and some angelic little children? You know your castle wouldn't be perfect without," said blunt Jo, who had no tender fancies yet, and rather scorned romance, except in books. "You'd have nothing but horses, inkstands, and novels in yours," answered Meg petulantly. "Wouldn't I though? I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, rooms piled high with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be as famous as Laurie's music. I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream." "Mine is to stay at home safe with Father and Mother, and help take care of the family," said Beth contentedly. "Don't you wish for anything else?" asked Laurie. "Since I had my little piano, I am perfectly satisfied. I only wish we may all keep well and be together, nothing else." "I have ever so many wishes, but the pet one is to be an artist, and go to Rome, and do fine pictures, and be the best artist in the whole world," was Amy's modest desire. "We're an ambitious set, aren't we? Every one of us, but Beth, wants to be rich and famous, and gorgeous in every respect.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Most of them, after the set, were going to make it to the home of a famous Negro singer who had just scored in his first movie. Because the joint was new, it was packed. Lately, he had heard, it hadn’t been doing so well. All kinds of people had been there that night, white and black, high and low, people who came for the music and people who spent their lives in joints for other reasons. There were a couple of minks and a few near-minks and a lot of God-knows-what shining at wrists and ears and necks and in the hair. The colored people were having a good time because they sensed that, for whatever reason, this crowd was solidly with them; and the white people were having a good time because nobody was putting them down for being white. The joint, as Fats Waller would have said, was jumping. There was some pot on the scene and he was a little high. He was feeling great. And, during the last set, he came doubly alive because the saxophone player, who had been way out all night, took off on a terrific solo. He was a kid of about the same age as Rufus, from some insane place like Jersey City or Syracuse, but somewhere along the line he had discovered that he could say it with a saxophone. He had a lot to say. He stood there, wide-legged, humping the air, filling his barrel chest, shivering in the rags of his twenty-odd years, and screaming through the horn Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? And, again, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? This, anyway, was the question Rufus heard, the same phrase, unbearably, endlessly, and variously repeated, with all of the force the boy had. The silence of the listeners became strict with abruptly focused attention, cigarettes were unlit, and drinks stayed on the tables; and in all of the faces, even the most ruined and most dull, a curious, wary light appeared. They were being assaulted by the saxophonist who perhaps no longer wanted their love and merely hurled his outrage at them with the same contemptuous, pagan pride with which he humped the air. And yet the question was terrible and real; the boy was blowing with his lungs and guts out of his own short past; somewhere in that past, in the gutters or gang fights or gang shags; in the acrid room, on the sperm-stiffened blanket, behind marijuana or the needle, under the smell of piss in the precinct basement, he had received the blow from which he never would recover and this no one wanted to believe. Do you love me? Do you love me?

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I drove to the workshop with three other women from the group. It took all day: east on Highway 1 out of Vancouver, then north up the Fraser Canyon, trail of the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s and ‘70s. When we hit Williams Lake we turned northwest and followed Highway 20 as it angles toward the coast again. Wolf’s Den sits midway between Williams Lake and Bella Coola on the coast. Throughout the drive all four of us chattered away as only women can. We took turns driving, ate junk food, stopped frequently for bio breaks and, of course, discussed spirituality. The sun shone as mile after mile of quiet, single-lane highway spooled away in our wake. I’d never seen this part of BC before and was fascinated as we squeezed between the walls of the Fraser Canyon and then were spat out onto rolling grassland at the canyon’s top end a few hours later. I was nervous about attending my first spiritual workshop. And excited. I’d never participated in anything like this before. There was the familiar sense of spiritual purposefulness that sang quietly in the background of my mind. Like the Blues Brothers, my fellow travellers and I were on a mission from God, and it felt so good to be certain of something. Beyond Williams Lake, there were several hundred miles of the highway, still unpaved at that time, and the journey slowed down as we allowed for potholes and the corduroy effect that large transport trucks leave in their wake. Finally, road-weary and cramped, we pulled off the highway and bounced down a long gravel driveway that eventually terminated at the lodge. This was Limori’s unofficial ashram, the seat of her growing empire, although I didn’t think of it as such as the time. She and her ever-present sidekick Alice greeted us warmly with hugs and inquiries about our journey. We were shown around the lodge, then later the property. It was the first time any of us had been here. Limori was the warm, genial hostess, clearly enjoying her role as matriarch of the brood that was gathering under her wings. She was also obviously proud of the work that those who lived at Wolf’s Den had done under her tutelage and direction, to rescue the lodge and its outlying cabins from the neglect and wear they had suffered in recent years. She proudly showed us through all the buildings, pointing out all that had been done and mentioning the numerous changes that were to come. The lodge and all the cabins were rustic split-log design, perfectly befitting the surrounding wilderness landscape. The lodge had a fair-sized kitchen, which opened to the main living room via a pass-through window and a set of swinging doors. This room, with red carpet salvaged form Limori’s home in Port Moody, would serve as the main workshop space and the place we would eat our meals, buffet style.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He would have entered her by now, this woman who was not here, her sighs would be different and her surrender would never be total. Her sex, which afforded him his entry, would nevertheless remain strange to him, an incitement and an anguish, and an everlasting mystery. And even now, in this bright, laboring and doubting moment, with only the rain as their witness, he knew that he was condemned to women. What was it like to be a man, condemned to men? He could not imagine it and he felt a quick revulsion, quickly banished, for it threatened his ease. But at the very same moment his excitement increased: he felt that he could do with Eric whatever he liked. Now, Vivaldo, who was accustomed himself to labor, to be the giver of the gift, and enter into his satisfaction by means of the satisfaction of a woman, surrendered to the luxury, the flaming torpor of passivity, and whispered in Eric’s ear a muffled, urgent plea.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This is the sequel to my first book, Through the Narrow Gate, which told the story of my seven years as a Roman Catholic nun. I entered my convent in 1962, when I was seventeen years old. It was entirely my own decision. My family was not particularly devout, and my parents were horrified when I told them that I had a religious vocation. They thought, quite correctly as it turned out, that I was far too young to make such a momentous choice, but they allowed themselves to be persuaded because they wanted me to get it out of my system as soon as possible. I was usually quite a biddable child but I was anxious to test my vocation immediately, instead of waiting until after I had been to university, as my parents would have preferred. My unusual resolution in the face of their opposition impressed them, and they feared that I might spend my college years in a state of mulish obstinacy, failing to make the most of the opportunities of university life and longing for it all to be over so that I could do what I really wanted. So on September 14, 1962, I packed my bags and joined twelve other girls at the novitiate. Why was I so determined to take this step? The motivation behind this type of decision is always complex, and there were a number of interlocking reasons. It is true that at this time I was very shy and worried about the demands of adult social life, but even though the religious life might seem a soft option, it was tough, and I would not have lasted more than a few weeks if it had simply been a means of escape. I wanted to find God. I was filled with excitement and enthusiasm on that September day, convinced that I had embarked on a spiritual quest, an epic adventure, in the course of which I would lose the confusions of my adolescent self in the infinite and ultimately satisfying mystery that we call God. And because I was only seventeen, I imagined that this would happen pretty quickly. Very soon I would become a wise and enlightened woman, all passion spent. God would no longer be a remote, shadowy reality but a vibrant presence in my life. I would see him wherever I looked, and I myself would be transfigured, because, as Saint Paul had said, my puny little ego would disappear and Christ, the Word of God, would live in me. I would be serene, joyful, inspired, and inspiring—perhaps even a saint.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  Lecture Ten Sabbatai Zevi and Messianic Mysticism Scope: The elements of mysticism and Messianism that had gathered in Lurianic mysticism found an explosive and paradoxical expression in the figure of Sabbatai Zevi. Zevi’s self-proclamation as Messiah and subsequent apostasy from Judaism in 1665–1666 caused a mass movement of excitement among Jews in Europe. A sectarian movement (Sabbatianism) emerged that combined elements of Kabbalism with antinomian tendencies, in sharp contrast to the halachic piety of all previous Jewish Mysticism. This lecture traces the career of Sabbatai Zevi and his chief propagandist, Nathan of Gaza, as well as the subsequent shape of the movement that took his name. Outline I. The Jewish mystical tradition developed over the centuries, slowly, quietly, and in circles of intense textual analysis, but when we turn to Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) and Messianic Mysticism, we find something new and dangerous, both for Jewish Mysticism and for Judaism as a whole. A. There were many messianic pretenders in the 1st century. 1. Jesus of Nazareth was thought by some to be a Messiah but was rejected by the majority of Jews. 2. Bar Kochba had been proclaimed Messiah by Rabbi Akiva in the revolt of 135 but was discovered not to have restored the people. B. Mysticism always tests exoteric traditions by its emphasis on inner devotion more than external observance, and each religious tradition has an example of mysticism becoming heretical. 1. In Christianity, Gnosticism was rejected for its denial of central truths concerning Jesus. 2. In Islam, Hallaj is repudiated by the majority of Muslims because he is thought to have compromised the oneness of Allah. 3. In Judaism, the Sabbatian movement was declared heretical because of its principled antinomianism. That is, it took a 42 ©2008 The Teaching Company.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  In 1990, most of the world still questioned whether the Internet was really going to be something major or whether it was just a passing fad for computer geeks and porn enthusiasts. A mere ten years later, on March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ composite— a stock-market index driven by high-tech companies—closed at its all-time peak of 5049 points, more than double its value twelve months earlier. It was driven to that height by huge and irrational market exuberance over the seemingly limitless potential of so-called dot-com companies—Internet businesses set up to mine the electronic gold apparently available to anyone who could register a URL and set up a web page. “Analysts see the trend continuing,” reported CNN Money on that record-setting day. Instead the dot-com bubble burst. Billions of dollars were lost by people who had sunk their money into companies such as Pets.com and WebVan.com. How did the Internet go from anarchic geek paradise to maker and breaker of billionaires in the space of a decade? Where did the dangerous fantasy come from that it was so easy to make money online? It came from the pornographers. In 1996, estimates of online pornography revenues ranged from $52 million to $100 million. A mere three years later, it was closer to $2 billion—and that at a time when less than a quarter of the American population had Internet access. The adult industry proved there was money—big money—to be made on the Internet. They proved it many times over through a wide variety of business models, including selling bandwidth and access to the Internet itself. Usenet and MUDS are only two of many areas where pornography and erotica created demand for Internet access. Another sex-driven online application that created a huge market was chat rooms available through services such as America Online. Wall Street Journal journalist Lewis Perdue undertook a study of these chat rooms in their heyday in the late 1990s. He monitored activity in public rooms, and used a combination of analysis and educated guesses about private rooms, to determine that 82 per cent of the chat activity on AOL had to do with sex—dirty talk, trading pictures or hope-for-future-real-life-interaction flirtation and come-ons. Millions of people bought modems, ran up massive phone bills and paid for Internet access so that they could have private, convenient access to new forms of pornography. “How is it,” Perdue asks in his resulting book, EroticaBiz, “that the brightest minds in the world’s biggest media companies working with huge investment budgets can’t eke out a dime’s worth of black ink while some bootstrapped 22-year-old with a ton of dirty pictures can make thousands in profits working part-time from his bedroom and bigger pornographers can easily clear $10 million or more every month?”

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  With my new friends, I attended the Wednesday night meditation classes faithfully and continued to crave more of everything our guru had to say. In those first couple of years with her I felt a burning eagerness to be asked to serve God. “Ask me to move to Wolf’s Den,” I would think to myself, “and I’ll gladly do it.” If she had asked me to do almost anything I would have gladly leapt at the chance to obey and serve. I wanted to be told what to do and what to believe. It was effortless for me to switch my allegiance and obedience from the authoritarian rule of a parent to the authoritarian rule of my guru. I would soon have an opportunity to spend more concentrated time with Limori at the first weeklong workshop, to be held at Wolf’s Den Fishing Lodge. Three of Limori’s disciples had been living in the primitive and run-down resort almost since I had joined the group, and had been slowly but surely renovating and improving it so that it could be operated as a business. It was the perfect place for a spiritual retreat, with cabins for up to twenty-five of us to sleep in and a lodge and kitchen that could support us while we worked up an appetite meditating and clearing out ego positions. I didn’t know it at the time but events at this workshop would ripple outward for years afterward and have a direct impact on my life, my relationship with Michael and eventually on my departure from the cult. 4Canadian AshramThe way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. —G. K. Chesterton W olf’s Den Fishing Lodge, the seat of Limori’s spiritual kingdom, is located on a lake in the middle of a remote Canadian wilderness region called the Chilcotin Plateau. The lodge itself sits on the crest of a small hill that leads down to the lake on a piece of property roughly three hectares in size. The freshwater fishing in this lake and others surrounding the lodge is world-class, and in winter the area is renowned for its cross-country skiing and ice fishing. In June, the blackflies will eat your head if you’re not paying attention. The word remote only begins to describe this part of the world. The main highway that runs through the Chilcotin to the British Columbia coast has an 80-kilometre (50-mile) stretch that, as of this writing, is still unpaved. The BC Ministry of Transport calls it a highway but technically it’s still a gravel road. Telephone service didn’t arrive at Wolf’s Den until the 1990s; before that, a radiophone provided contact with the outside world. The closest town, named after the lake that Wolf’s Den sits on, is a 20-minute drive from the lodge. Please keep in mind that I’m using the word town loosely. If you’re looking for peace and quiet, you’ve found the Promised Land.

• From Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2008)

  D. A young man named Nathan of Gaza became Zevi’s advocate and announced in 1665 that the Messianic Age would begin the next year. 1. With his followers, Zevi reached Smyrna in the fall of 1665 and, on the New Year, proclaimed himself Messiah. 2. This announcement caused incredible excitement throughout Europe, leading many Jews to place their faith in Zevi as the Messiah and disrupt their lives in preparation for the coming age. 3. Zevi began to issue decrees concerning observance, changing fast days into days of celebration; those who did not obey were suppressed. E. He was eventually arrested by the Muslim ruler of Istanbul and brought before Sultan Mehmed IV on September 16, 1666. Instead of martyrdom, Zevi chose conversion to Islam. 1. Between the time of his apostasy and his death in 1676, Zevi maintained that he was actually in service to God in both traditions. 2. He succeeded in bringing some Muslims to his Kabbalistic views and some Jews to Islam, creating a Judeo-Turkish sect based on faith in him. F. Evaluating the character of Sabbatai Zevi is difficult: Was he a sincere if sick individual or a manipulative charlatan? 1. In Gershom Scholem’s reading, Zevi was a manic-depressive who was mainly the passive instrument of Nathan of Gaza. 2. In another reading, he was a notoriety seeker who manipulated events to secure his own fame. III. The movement called Sabbatianism did not end with Sabbatai Zevi’s apostasy from Judaism. A. In a classic case of cognitive dissonance resolved, the fact of Zevi’s apostasy was reinterpreted according to the tenets of Lurianic Kabbalism. 1. His apostasy was actually a form of self-exile, an entering into the abyss of evil. 2. Restoration will be in the future, with the return of Zevi as the triumphant Messiah. B. Although rejected by other Jews, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Sabbatians continued as believers and practiced the ritual breaking of the Commandments. 44 ©2008 The Teaching Company. Recommended Reading: Scholem, G. Sabbatai Zevi: The Mystical Messiah (1626–1676). Questions to Consider: 1. Identify the points of similarity and dissimilarity in the messianic careers of Sabbatai Zevi and Jesus of Nazareth. 2. Discuss the concept of “cognitive dissonance” and its usefulness in analyzing powerful social movements. ©2008 The Teaching Company. 45

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  We walked down a dark, mirrored hallway with doors on both sides. At the end was a high-ceilinged, shadowed room like a cave. A hundred men murmured and elbowed each other there, jostling for a view; many of them were conservatively dressed Japanese. When a few caught sight of us, I felt Jeannie suddenly shivering beside me; she grabbed my arm and whispered, “Don’t leave me alone.” We turned from the men to the little bar in one corner, looking for a shot of courage. But everyone wants a shot of courage here, and the theater disapproves of false bravado, and serves only soft drinks. When I turned back to look more closely at the customers, I could see how they shuffled in place, restive and sober. In the distance, over their heads and under warm yellow lights, I saw a stage, where a softly shaped blond woman soaped herself gently under a slow shower. Don disappeared in the mob. Jeannie and I went back down the hall for the peep show. I had begun to stare back at the men staring at me, and always they turned away. We crowded together into one booth, arms around each other to fit, and pressed close to the glass. Through the window I could see a rectangular, carpeted room and rows of other booths lining the sides. In the windows floated the vague and ghostly faces of men, waiting. I heard a door open, close, the shuffling of feet, a muffled yell, and then tinny music. A woman dressed in black leather entered the room. She had long, fine, honey-colored hair, big white teeth, a sardonic grin. Her long, pale legs were covered past the knee in black leather boots. She danced and bucked energetically around the room, cracked a short whip in one hand, and as she passed I could see the rings pierced through her nipples and the slim silver chain dangling between her labia. Money began to fall through various slots at the bottom of the windows, one bill after the other, and she tossed them over her head as she passed. The paper money floated lazily in the breeze of her movements, like autumn leaves, drifting to the ground. Eventually she returned to us. Jeannie looked at me, her breath quick, intoxicated. The dancer caught our two surprised, female faces, and spread her legs above our heads. Her vulva was shiny with sweat. “How do you like that?” she hollered, and I heard a muffled shout in Japanese from the booth beside us.

• From Little Women (1868)

  uncomfortable feelings toward the Moffats. On the Thursday evening, Belle shut herself up with her maid, and between them they turned Meg into a fine lady. They crimped and curled her hair, they polished her neck and arms with some fragrant powder, touched her lips with coralline salve to make them redder, and Hortense would have added 'a soupcon of rouge', if Meg had not rebelled. They laced her into a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly breathe and so low in the neck that modest Meg blushed at herself in the mirror. A set of silver filagree was added, bracelets, necklace, brooch, and even earrings, for Hortense tied them on with a bit of pink silk which did not show. A cluster of tea-rose buds at the bosom, and a ruche, reconciled Meg to the display of her pretty, white shoulders, and a pair of high- heeled silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart. A lace handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a shoulder holder finished her off, and Miss Belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a newly dressed doll. "Mademoiselle is charmante, tres jolie, is she not?" cried Hortense, clasping her hands in an affected rapture. "Come and show yourself," said Miss Belle, leading the way to the room where the others were waiting. As Meg went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her earrings tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her fun had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she was 'a little beauty'. Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically, and for several minutes she stood, like a jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like a party of magpies. "While I dress, do you drill her, Nan, in the management of her skirt and those French heels, or she will trip herself up. Take your silver butterfly, and catch up that long curl on the left side of her head, Clara, and don't any of you disturb the charming work of my hands," said Belle, as she hurried away, looking well pleased with her success. "You don't look a bit like yourself, but you are very nice. I'm nowhere beside you, for Belle has heaps of taste, and you're quite French, I assure you. Let your flowers hang, don't be so careful of them, and be sure you don't trip," returned Sallie, trying not to care that Meg was prettier than herself. Keeping that warning carefully in mind, Margaret got safely down stairs and

• From Little Women (1868)

  That's a first-rate story." Jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall. "Prime, isn't it?" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion. "I think you and I could do as well as that if we tried," returned Jo, amused at his admiration of the trash. "I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could. She makes a good living out of such stories, they say." and he pointed to the name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, under the title of the tale. "Do you know her?" asked Jo, with sudden interest. "No, but I read all her pieces, and I know a fellow who works in the office where this paper is printed." "Do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?" and Jo looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly sprinkled exclamation points that adorned the page. "Guess she does! She knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it." Here the lecture began, but Jo heard very little of it, for while Professor Sands was prosing away about Belzoni, Cheops, scarabei, and hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper, and boldly resolving to try for the hundred-dollar prize offered in its columns for a sensational story. By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder. She said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when 'genius took to burning'. Jo had never tried this style before, contenting herself with very mild romances for The Spread Eagle . Her experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and costumes. Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake, as a striking and appropriate denouement. The manuscript was privately dispatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that if the tale didn't get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect, she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  At first, there was no money to be made in text-based games. The technology was slow, expensive and unreliable. It required still more arcane knowledge, of the type possessed only by an emerging social class of computer nerds. The chain reaction that led to today’s multimedia-rich virtual worlds could easily have fizzled out like a bad science fair project were it not for the fact that users found ways to turn these fantasy games into sex-fantasy games. The power of sexuality in these games was different than and in some ways greater than that of photography, cinema, literature and almost every other medium. That power, appropriately enough, comes from a word—a specific word that all virtual worlds, implicitly or explicitly, depend on. A word that not coincidentally appears in the opening scene of MUD1. A word that fundamentally changes how a player experiences the medium. That word is “you.” “You” leave the Elizabethan Tearoom. “You” travel across the land. “You” battle monsters and collect treasure. By typing (more) words into a command-line prompt, “You go north,” “You pick up a stick,” “You hit spider with stick,” and so on. Primitive and banal as this “adventure” might sound, the power of “you” made all the difference. In most media, the story happens to someone else. The media consumer watches, listens to or reads about the actions of others. This is as true for pornography as anything else: porn involves other people taking off their clothes or having sex. The pornography consumer watches. At most, porn consumers’ participation parallels the content, but there is a clear divide between reality and fantasy, and the role of the consumer is that of voyeur rather than agent. This line gets blurry, though, when the story happens to “you” rather than “them.” The erotic content in early virtual worlds was not created by game designers. Game makers filled the first virtual dungeons with swords and sorcery, not whips and leather. Role-playing was oriented toward battles and quests rather than submission and domination. But fantasies are fantasies. The original virtual games became environments in which players lived out all kinds of scenarios, especially sexual ones. The story of virtual worlds and that of online sex soon became inseparable. There was more. The opening of MUD1 describes the “feeling of kinship with those who, like you, seek their destiny in The Land.” Not only was the story happening to you but the other characters were also real people. The sex that emerged in these games went beyond people using a new medium to view porn, and beyond a mere prefabricated story written in the second-person singular point of view, to a world where real people interacted with other real human beings through the media. It was a revolutionary distinction.

• From Wild (2012)

  I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I’d lost, the new one I was spinning—while I hiked that morning, the snowy peaks of the High Sierras coming into occasional view. As I walked, I didn’t think of those snowy peaks. Instead, I thought of what I would do once I arrived at the Kennedy Meadows General Store that afternoon, imagining in fantastic detail the things I would purchase to eat and drink—cold lemonade and candy bars and junk food I seldom ate in my regular life. I pictured the moment when I would lay hands on my first resupply box, which felt to me like a monumental milestone, the palpable proof that I’d made it at least that far. Hello, I said to myself in anticipation of what I’d say once I arrived at the store, I’m a PCT hiker here to pick up my box. My name is Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl Strayed, Cheryl Strayed, Cheryl Strayed—those two words together still rolled somewhat hesitantly off my tongue. Cheryl had been my name forever, but Strayed was a new addition—only officially my name since April, when Paul and I had filed for divorce. Paul and I had taken on each other’s last names when we married, and our two names became one long four-syllable name, connected by a hyphen. I never liked it. It was too complicated and cumbersome. Seldom did anyone manage to get it right, and even I stumbled over it a good portion of the time. Cheryl Hyphen-Hyphen, an old grumpy man I briefly worked for called me, flummoxed by my actual name, and I couldn’t help but see his point. In that uncertain period when Paul and I had been separated for several months but were not yet sure we wanted to get divorced, we sat down together to scan a set of no-fault, do-it-yourself divorce documents we’d ordered over the phone, as if holding them in our hands would help us decide what to do. As we paged through the documents, we came across a question that asked the name we’d each have after the divorce. The line beneath the question was perfectly blank. On it, to my amazement, we could write anything. Be anyone. We laughed about it at the time, making up incongruous new names for ourselves—names of movie stars and cartoon characters and strange combinations of words that weren’t rightly names at all.