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 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I was still in that trancelike state when I mounted the stage. For I don’t know how long, I just stood there, the sun in my eyes, the crowd of a few hundred restless after lunch. A couple of students were throwing a Frisbee on the lawn; others were standing off to the side, ready to break off to the library at any moment. Without waiting for a cue, I stepped up to the microphone. “There’s a struggle going on,” I said. My voice barely carried beyond the first few rows. A few people looked up, and I waited for the crowd to quiet. “I say, there’s a struggle going on!” The Frisbee players stopped. “It’s happening an ocean away. But it’s a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not. A struggle that demands we choose sides. Not between black and white. Not between rich and poor. No—it’s a harder choice than that. It’s a choice between dignity and servitude. Between fairness and injustice. Between commitment and indifference. A choice between right and wrong …” I stopped. The crowd was quiet now, watching me. Somebody started to clap. “Go on with it, Barack,” somebody else shouted. “Tell it like it is.” Then the others started in, clapping, cheering, and I knew that I had them, that the connection had been made. I took hold of the mike, ready to plunge on, when I felt someone’s hands grabbing me from behind. It was just as we’d planned it, Andy and Jonathan looking grim-faced behind their dark glasses. They started yanking me off the stage, and I was supposed to act like I was trying to break free, except a part of me wasn’t acting, I really wanted to stay up there, to hear my voice bouncing off the crowd and returning back to me in applause. I had so much left to say.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  My ears perked up; this sounded like self-interest. Over the next few days, I had Ruby introduce me to other parents who shared her fears and felt frustrated over the lackluster police response. When I suggested that we invite the district commander to a neighborhood meeting so the community could air its concerns, everyone agreed; and as we talked about publicity one of the women mentioned that there was a Baptist church on the block where the boy had been shot, and that the pastor there, a Reverend Reynolds, might be willing to make an announcement to his congregation. It took me a week of phone calls, but when I finally reached Reverend Reynolds, his response seemed promising. He was the president of the local ministerial alliance, he said—“churches coming together to preach the social gospel.” He said that the group would be holding its regular meeting the very next day and that he would be happy to put me on the agenda. I hung up the phone full of excitement, and arrived at Reverend Reynolds’s church early the next morning. A pair of young women dressed in white gowns and gloves met me in the foyer and showed me to a large conference room where ten or twelve older black men stood talking in a loose circle. A particularly distinguished-looking gentleman came up to greet me. “You must be Brother Obama,” he said, taking my hand. “Reverend Reynolds. You’re just in time—we’re about to start.” We all sat around a long table, and Reverend Reynolds led us in prayer before offering me the floor. Suppressing my nerves, I told the ministers about the increased gang activity and the meeting we had planned, and passed out flyers for them to distribute in their congregations. “With your leadership,” I said, warming up to my subject, “this can be a first step towards cooperation on all kinds of issues. Fixing the schools. Bringing jobs back into the neighborhood …” Just as I passed out the last flyers, a tall, pecan-colored man entered the room. He wore a blue, double-breasted suit and a large gold cross against his scarlet tie. His hair was straightened and swept back in a pompadour. “Brother Smalls, you just missed an excellent presentation,” Reverend Reynolds said. “This young man, Brother Obama, has a plan to organize a meeting about the recent gang shooting.” Reverend Smalls poured himself a cup of coffee and perused the flyer. “What’s the name of your organization?” he asked me. “Developing Communities Project.” “Developing Communities …” His brow knotted. “I think I remember some white man coming around talking about some Developing something or other. Funny-looking guy. Jewish name. You connected to the Catholics?” I told him that some of the Catholic churches in the area were involved.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  They are all in the drawing-room, and you can go by the back stairs. And if anyone does see you, and asks, you can say you are fetching it for me. Which is true.’‘Well...’‘Go on! Take your candle!’ I rose, then took hold of her hands and pulled her to her feet; and she - infected at last by my new recklessness - gave another giggle, put her fingers to her lips, then tip-toed from the room. While she was gone I lit a lamp, but kept it turned very low. She had left her cap upon the bed: I picked it up and set it on my own head, and when she returned five minutes later and saw me wearing it she laughed out loud.She carried a dewy bottle and a glass. ‘Did you see any ladies?’ I asked her.‘I saw a couple, but they never saw me. They were at the scullery door and - oh! they was kissing the guts out of each other!’I imagined her standing in the shadows, watching them. I went to her and took the bottle, then peeled away the lead wrapper from its neck. ‘You’ve shaken it up,’ I said. ‘It’ll go off with a real bang!’ She put her hands over her ears, and shut her eyes. I felt the cork squirm in the glass for a second; then it leapt from my fingers, and I gave a yell: ‘Quick! Quick! Bring a glass!’ A creamy fountain of foam had risen from the neck of the bottle, and now drenched my fingers and soaked my legs - I was still, of course, clad in the little white toga. Zena seized the glass from the tray and held it, giggling again, beneath the spurting wine.We went and sat upon the bed, Zena with the glass in her hands, me sipping from the frothing bottle. When she drank, she coughed; but I filled her glass again and said: ‘Drink up! Just like those cows downstairs.’ And she drank, and drank again, until her cheeks were red. I felt my own head grow giddier with every sip I took, and the pulse at my swollen face grow thicker. At last I said, ‘Oh! How it hurts!’, and Zena set down her glass to put her fingers, very gently, upon my cheek. When she had held them there for a second or two, I took her hand in my own, and leaned and kissed her.She didn’t draw away until I made to lie upon the bed and pull her with me. Then she said: ‘Oh, we cannot!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had us stand together, with our arms linked; then he made us turn, and do again the little stiff-legged dance that he had caught us at before. And all the time he walked about us with narrowed eyes, stroking his chin and nodding.‘We shall need a suit for you, of course,’ he said to me. ‘A number of suits, indeed, to match Kitty’s. But that we can easily arrange.’ He took my hat from my head, and my plait fell down upon my shoulder. ‘Something must be done about your hair; but the colour, at least, is perfect - a wonderful contrast with Kitty’s, so the folk in the gallery will have no trouble telling you apart.’ He winked, then stood surveying me a little longer with his hands behind his head. He had removed his jacket. He wore a shirt of green with a deep white collar - he was always a fancy dresser — and the armpits of the shirt were dark with sweat. I said, ‘You really mean it, Walter?’ and he nodded: ‘Nancy, I do.’He kept us busy, that day, all through the afternoon. The outing we had planned, the Sunday stroll, was all forgotten, the driver who was waiting he paid off and sent away. The house being empty, we worked at Mrs Dendy’s piano, quite as hard as if it were a weekday morning - except that now I sang too, and not to save Kitty’s voice, as I had sometimes done before, but to try out my own alongside it. We sang again the song that Walter had caught us singing, ‘If Ever I Cease to Love’ — but, of course, we were self-conscious now, and it sounded terribly lame. Then we tried some of Kitty’s songs, that I had heard her sing at Canterbury and knew by heart; and they went a little better. And finally we tried a new song, one of the West End songs that were fashionable then — the one about strolling through Piccadilly with a pocket so full of sovereigns all the ladies look, and smile, and wink their eyes. It is sung by mashers even now; but it was Kitty and I who had it first, and when we tried it out together that afternoon - changing the author’s ‘I’ to ‘we’, linking our arms, and promenading over the parlour-rug with our voices raised in a harmony - well, it sounded sweeter and more comical than I could have thought possible. We sang it once, and then a second time, and then a third and fourth; and each time I grew a little freer, a little gayer, and a little less certain of the foolishness of Walter’s plan ...At length, when our throats were hoarse and our heads were swimming with sovereigns and winks, he closed the piano lid and let us rest. We made tea, and talked of other things.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “Hey, didn’t I promise we were gonna make something happen?” “He sure enough did,” Mona said with a wink. I told them that I’d leave them alone for at least a couple of days, and went out to my car feeling slightly light-headed. I can do this job, I said to myself. Have this whole damn town organized by the time we’re through. I lit a cigarette and, in my self-congratulatory mood, imagined taking the leadership downtown to sit down with Harold and discuss the fate of the city. Then, under a streetlight a few feet away, I saw the drunk from the meeting spinning around in slow circles, looking down at his elongated shadow. I got out of my car and asked him if he needed some help getting home. “I don’t need no help!” he shouted, trying to steady himself “Not from nobody, you understand me! Punk-ass motherfucker … try to tell me shit …” His voice trailed off. Before I could say anything more, he turned and began to wobble down the center of the road, disappearing into the darkness. CHAPTER TEN [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] WINTER CAME AND THE city turned monochrome—black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds. The work was tougher in such weather. Mounds of fine white powder blew through the cracks of my car, down my collar and into the openings in my coat. On rounds of interviews, I never spent enough time in one place to thaw properly, and parking spaces became scarce on the snow-narrowed streets—everyone, it seemed, had a cautionary tale about fights breaking out over parking spaces after a heavy snow, the resulting brawl or shooting. Attendance at evening meetings became more sporadic; people called at the last minute to say they had the flu or their car wouldn’t start; those who did come looked damp and resentful. At times, driving home from such evenings, with the northern gusts off the lake shaking my car across the lane dividers, I would momentarily forget where I was, my thoughts a numbed reflection of the silence. Marty suggested that I take more time off, build a life for myself away from the job. His concerns were professional, he explained: Without some personal support outside the work, an organizer lost perspective and could quickly burn out. There was something to what he said, for it was true that the people I met on the job were generally much older than me, with a set of concerns and demands that created barriers to friendship. When I wasn’t working, the weekends would usually find me alone in an empty apartment, making do with the company of books.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  We said good-night in our usual way, but then we both lay wakeful. I could hear her creaking about in her bed upstairs, and once she went out to the privy. I thought she might have paused on her way, outside my door, to listen for my snores. I didn’t call out to her.Next morning I was too tired to study her terribly hard; but as I set the pan of bacon on the stove, she came to me. She came very close, and then she said, quite low - perhaps so that her brother, who was in the room across the passageway, might not hear: ‘Nance, will you come out with me tonight?’‘Tonight?’ I said, yawning, and frowning at the bacon, which I had put too wet into a too-hot pan, so that it hissed and steamed. ‘Where to? Not collecting subscriptions again, surely?’‘Not subscriptions, no. Not work at all, in fact, but — pleasure.’‘Pleasure!’ I had never heard her say the word before, and it seemed, all of a sudden, a terribly lewd one. Perhaps she thought the same, for now she blushed a little, and took up a spoon and began to fiddle with it.‘There’s a public-house near Cable Street,’ she went on, ‘with a ladies’ room in it. The girls call it “The Boy in the Boat ...”’‘Oh yes?’She looked once at me, and then away again. ‘Yes. Annie will be there, she says, with a new friend of hers; and perhaps Ruth and Nora.’‘Ruth and Nora too!’ I said lightly: they were the two girl-friends who had turned out sweethearts. ‘Is it to be all toms, then?’To my surprise she nodded, quite seriously: ‘Yes.’All toms! The thought sent me into a fever. It was twelve months since I had last passed an evening in a room full of woman-lovers: I was not sure I still possessed the knack. What would I wear? What attitude would I strike? All toms! What would they make of me? And what would they make of Florence?‘Will you still go,’ I asked, ‘if I don’t?’‘I rather thought I might...’‘Then I’ll certainly come,’ I said - and had to look quickly to the pan of smoking bacon, and so didn’t see whether she looked pleased, or satisfied, or indifferent.I passed a fretful day, picking through my few dull frocks and skirts in the hope of finding some forgotten tommish gem amongst them.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  So unreal and the realest thing that ever happened.... And maybe the worst thing for me now is living in peacetime without a possibility of that high again. I hate what that high was about but I loved that high. 26 “Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent,” Hedges explains. “Trivia dominates our conversation and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us a resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble.” 27 One of the many, intertwined motives driving men to the battlefield has been the tedium and pointlessness of ordinary domestic existence. The same hunger for intensity would compel others to become monks and ascetics. The warrior in battle may feel connected with the cosmos, but afterward he cannot always resolve these inner contradictions. It is fairly well established that there is a strong taboo against killing our own kind—an evolutionary stratagem that helped our species to survive. 28 Still, we fight. But to bring ourselves to do so, we envelop the effort in a mythology—often a “religious” mythology—that puts distance between us and the enemy. We exaggerate his differences, be they racial, religious, or ideological. We develop narratives to convince ourselves that he is not really human but monstrous, the antithesis of order and goodness. Today we may tell ourselves that we are fighting for God and country or that a particular war is “just” or “legal.” But this encouragement doesn’t always take hold. During the Second World War, for instance, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall of the U.S. Army and a team of historians interviewed thousands of soldiers from more than four hundred infantry companies that had seen close combat in Europe and the Pacific. Their findings were startling: only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen had been able to fire at the enemy directly; the rest tried to avoid it and had developed complex methods of misfiring or reloading their weapons so as to escape detection. 29 It is hard to overcome one’s nature. To become efficient soldiers, recruits must go through a grueling initiation, not unlike what monks or yogins undergo, to subdue their emotions. As the cultural historian Joanna Bourke explains the process: Individuals had to be broken down to be rebuilt into efficient fighting men. The basic tenets included depersonalization, uniforms, lack of privacy, forced social relationships, tight schedules, lack of sleep, disorientation followed by rites of reorganization according to military codes, arbitrary rules, and strict punishment. The methods of brutalization were similar to those carried out by regimes where men were taught to torture prisoners.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Stay close to the boys, they are more wild and more fun anyway. You aren’t supposed to be dirty and wild like the boys. You love breaking this rule. Run around with them. Scream with them. Climb trees and hang upside down. Play red light, green light. Play freeze tag. Poke glow worms, and catch frogs, and cut earthworms in half. Watch the two halves wriggle away from each other. Wonder if you have killed something alive. Pour salt on slugs. Watch them die. Feel nothing. Pour water on ant hills. Watch the ants die. Feel nothing. Ride your bike fast, fast, so fast you fly off stairs and feel the wind in your hair. You might get hurt. This possibility is thrilling. Spend an entire summer building a bridge of discarded plywood and a shopping cart across the creek that runs behind your apartment building. When you finally make it to the other bank, you encounter a chain link fence. One of the boys runs home to grab his father’s wire cutters. You make a hole, all climb through, and you run, fast, fast, so fast you barely notice the small band of old white men in the distance, shouting at all of you, running toward you, golf clubs in hand. You laugh. Gleeful. You are trespassing. You do not get caught, by anyone. You climb the fire escape with the boys. Jump from apartment building rooftop to apartment building rooftop. Enjoy the look of fear on your mother’s face when she comes home and sees you in action. You have the power to strike fear into your mother’s heart. You feel triumphant. Your sneakers are always dirty, your hair is always disheveled, and your knees are always skinned. You cannot be controlled. At least not by her. Only by him, and only then, in private, by force.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had, somehow, acquired copies of all the keys to all the Britannia’s dusty, secret places - the cellars and the attics and the ancient property-rooms - and he would show me hampers full of costumes from the shows of the ‘fifties, papier-mâché crowns and sceptres, armour made of foil. Once or twice he led me up the great high ladders at the side of the stage, into the flies: here we would stand with our chins upon the rails, sharing a cigarette, gazing at the ash as it fluttered through the web of ropes and platforms to the boards, sixty feet below us.It was quite like being at Mrs Dendy’s again, with all our friends around us - except, of course, that Walter wasn’t one of them. He came only occasionally to the Brit, and hardly at all to Stamford Hill; when he did, I couldn’t bear to see him so ill at ease, and so found business of my own to keep me occupied elsewhere, and left Kitty to deal with him. She, I noticed, was as awkward and self-conscious as he when he came calling, and seemed to prefer his letters to his person - for he sent his news to her by post, these days, so drastically had our old friendship dwindled. But she said she did not mind, and I understood she didn’t wish to talk of something that was painful to her. I knew it must be very hard for her, to think that Walter had guessed her secret, and hated it. Chapter 7 [image "009" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_009_r1.jpg] We had opened at the Brit on Boxing Day, and rehearsed all through the weeks before it. Christmas, therefore, had been rather swallowed up; and when Mother had written - as she had the year before - to ask me home for it, I had had to send another apologetic note, to say I was again too busy. It was now almost a year and a half since I had left them; a year and a half since I had seen the sea and had a decent fresh oyster-supper. It was a long time - and no matter how gloomy and spiteful Alice’s letter had made me, I could not help but miss them all and wonder how they fared. One day in January I came across my old tin trunk with its yellow enamel inscription. I lifted the lid - and found Davy’s map of Kent pasted on the underside, with Whitstable marked with a faded arrow, ‘To show me where home was, in case I forgot.’

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Because it’s been eight years of planning, and conversations, and legal documents, and ovulation tracking, and fertili-teas, and inseminations, and waiting, and pregnancy tests, and frustration, and hard conversations with donors, and sadness, and steadily pushing my comfort zones, safety, and self-image as a trans person. So I’m hanging up the cleats on trying to conceive a child, and I’m going to start taking testosterone. At least for six months, and then I’ll see if I want to stop and try to return to the conception process. Also, I submitted my paperwork for top surgery!29 It will be another few weeks before I’m told if I’m even on the waiting list to choose a date for surgery. I’m feeling so excited and have really made peace with the decision to take a pause on inseminating. I’m thrilled to see the changes my body will make but scared about how my emotions may shift. I desperately fear that I’ll lose my keen intuition, my empathy skills, my ability to cry, and, in general, that my range of emotion will shrink. Yikes! I need models. I need more models of gentle men, spiritual men, vulnerable men. Praying to the planet Mars! February 2015 Man, these cats love the kid. The gay men. Literally some of the exact same ones that condescendingly tapped me on my head in response to me flirting with them are now trying to get to know a brotha. At least biblically anyway. But that’s cool, cuz that’s all I want right now anyway. April 2015 It’s remarkable that after only four months on T and just one month post-top surgery, I am already walking on the beach in just my trunks, being called “sir” and “he” more than 70 percent of the time.30 I’ve also been getting a lot of swipes on Grindr and messages on Jack’d.31 I even met a guy at a gay bar and went home with him afterward. That has never happened to me before! But … I don’t feel good about appreciating the attention from guys who applaud my masculinity but also state “no fats, no femmes” in their profile. Often I feel like I’m battling between my cock and my politics. The randiness that T instills does not always help me make a respectable decision. Then I whine about wanting a moment to just be affirmed as male by other males and especially in one of the most mammalian ways that can happen, without having to think critically about the contexts in which that human-ing is happening. I suppose it’s complicated.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  That’s what we took from Audre Lorde’s words: how do we live, love, suck, fuck, and liberate ourselves? How come we’re not talking about sex or desire anymore in relationship to liberation? And Audre Lorde was all about it, in a positive, consensual, erotic, fully embodied way. With cancer, without cancer, with physical disability, with different ways of living your life. And we thought, oh shit, where is this in the vision of how are we naming self-love, collective love, and desire and pleasure, as consensual, as transformative? How does this become our liberatory practice? We brought poets and burlesque performers and musicians together. And we did a ring-shout that Adaku Utah led at the beginning, because I said, “Girl, can we have a ring-shout?”42 Adaku looked at some recordings, and we did a fucking ring-shout. So it’s, like, how do we call ourselves in and call each other to see ourselves and bring testimony to each other? And there was a hot erotic photo booth. I was fascinated by how long it took us to get to the erotic. To get to a level of comfort and sexy when folks let it all hang out … much later into the night. I was like, oh, it probably needed more time. It needed to get a little bit later into the evening. amb. Those low lights … Cara. We had a fabulous photographer, who was dressed in leather and wearing leather suspenders, with toys and things for us to unravel with. He brought pleasure. Anyway, I just think the intention was there, and I thought, what if we had done this event into the wee hours of the morning? Who knows what would have come undone? But the burlesque dancers were off the chain. And we had fabulous gifts that we gave—dildos, vibrators, harnesses—as the raffle. Alongside archival pieces from Audre Lorde’s collection, donated by her daughter. And what was there? The conference program for the Audre Lorde Cele-Conference. Full circle. And prints of poems that she had on her wall. Gifts given to her. Cloths from Barbados. Just everything? To have that integrated with the hot burlesque and to understand all of these things and to name Audre Lorde inside of “what is the political positioning in twenty years, to fight for freedom?”—despite all odds that still say we’re expendable, cannot be loved, cannot be desired, cannot be powerful. We flipped that shit on its ass. We must continue to do that. And we celebrated that.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  2 This essay first appeared as adrienne maree brown, “Wherein I Write about Sex (5 Tangible Tools of a Pleasure Activist),” February 12, 2014, http://adriennemareebrown.net/2014/02/12/wherein-i-write-about-sex-5-tangible-tools-of-a-pleasure-activist. Beyoncé was released with no warning on December 13, 2013.3 In the lineage of somatics I study, we articulate commitments that we aspire to embody. At this time of this blog entry, mine was “a commitment to my body being a practice ground for transformation.”4 I have an incredible, vibrant, and supportive online community around this now, people in practice of shifting our relationships toward sugar and away from obsession, addiction, binging, and purging; toward moderation, balance, boundaries, and health. We lift each other up and cheer each other on.5 Perhaps my first love was a best friend I had when I was very young. We made out, touched each other, and I thought she was the best and coolest person on earth. Her mother put a stop to our grand baby affair in a way that left a lifelong interest in me for healthy ways to engage children around their bodies and feelings without shaming them.6 Quoting Mae West.7 The location is called One Taste, and the method and location have both been raved about and have been a spot of controversy and harm in my networks, so I would say come to your own conclusions here, as with anything else. I can only testify that the method, when focused on the self, is quite effective.section three: A Circle of SexConversation with a Sex ToyThe Womanizer is an unfortunate name for a relatively new sex toy that gently suctions the clitoris while vibrating around it8. Basically wowzerpants. amb. Can we talk about sex and desire? Womanizer. I didn’t know you knew how to put words into coherent sentences. amb. [blushing] I could say the same thing about you. You are such an incredible, miraculous toy. Womanizer. Thank you. I’m glad to be so effective. Sometimes I wish I knew more about pace, foreplay—me, my kind, we get such short, focused times with y’all. There’s no romance. amb. One time I did the candle thing … Womanizer. I’m not upset, honey. I feel proud of my results. I think it’s actually super-important to empower all humans to produce the healing that I give without having to negotiate it with anyone else. amb. I agree. I wish sex education was actually much more focused on what pleasure feels like, getting to know the sensual and sexual pleasures of our bodies before we share them with others, getting to know the distinct energy between yes and no. Womanizer. Yes, for so long pleasure has been controlled and vilified, which I think is because it’s actually so powerful. To know that you can access, in your own body, that kind of liberation and wholeness and being fully present right here, right now—it’s so much easier to dominate people who don’t know how to access their own pleasure. amb. Within and beyond the realm of sex.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Dallas. Exactly. In Standing Rock, the other thing was that the kind of generally agreed upon tactic was the numbers. The strategy of having people there but also having the numbers with us because we’re in a fucking rural-ass area and you can only … there’s only so much that fifteen Native folks can do until we’re all fucking arrested and locked up. And so we had to make it accessible. We had to basically create a narrative that was accessible by all different levels. And “Water is life” built upon that.100 That was a role that I didn’t really plan. But it’s like a conscious effort. How do you make this successful? And also, like, the real-ass shit of misinformation and how destructive that can be. It’s like, all right, my role is to give reliable, as best as I can, information and do it in a way that’s also accessible. And humor is a part of that. Like, right in the heart of it, I’m like fucking sitting there and I’m like, man, you know what, I wanna just fucking livestream me doing some sledding down the hills and showing people having fun because that’s what happening in the camp, like, people were having fun. People were enjoying themselves, but yet the camera comes on and they play the narrative. They played into the dogma of it: We have to be hard. We have to be serious. amb. There’s something about being an Indigenous man, being an Indigenous leader and bringing that humor … it’s like, oh, this is actually one of our survival strategies. I had not really worked with Indigenous organizers before Ruckus.101 And then coming to Ruckus and being like, “Oh y’all are clowning me. And you’re clowning each other. Oh, everyone’s just laughing.” I mean, like, it’s all fun and games in direct response to how intense the trauma and pressure is. Does that resonate? Dallas. It resonates strongly. Honestly, I feel like Native communities would not have gotten to where we are if it wasn’t for the power to make light of the situation. And through that lens of humor and laughter critique the world around us. We didn’t have the agency to change the situation, we at least have the agency to critique it through laughter and humor. Native folks are some of the most cynical people on the planet, you can’t help but be when you’re going through the shit we’ve gone through. And you know every funeral, every dark moment, I think—from our community, the role of the spokesperson, or in our language the Évapaha, is the MC, and there’s an art to it. In our communities, my specific Dakota communities, you had your elected leaders, but then there was the spokesperson. And they were the speaker on behalf of everybody, and it’s still … that tradition carries today. Everything they say is fed to them. amb. It’s being fed through the community process?

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As I had now nobody left alive in the village, who had concern enough about what should become of me, to start any objections to this scheme, and the woman who took care of me after my parents’ death, rather encouraged me to pursue it, I soon came to a resolution of making this launch into the wide world, by repairing to London, in order to seek my fortune, a phrase which, by the bye, has ruined more adventurers of both sexes, from the country, than ever it made or advanced. Nor did Esther Davis a little comfort and inspirit me to venture with her, by piquing my childish curiosity with the fine sights that were to be seen in London: the Tombs, the Lions, the King, the Royal Family, the fine Plays and Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell within her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which perfectly turned the little head of me. Nor can I remember, without laughing, the innocent admiration, not without a spice of envy, with which we poor girls, whose church-going clothes did not rise above dowlas shifts and stuff gowns, beplaced with silver: all which we imagined grew in London, and entered for a great deal into my determination of trying to come in for my share of them.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  amb. To me it sounds like intelligence, but go on. Taja. It’s a way that I move, because I don’t want to make it seem like I have a problem with being uncomfortable, because I also know that discomfort is part of an experience of moving through a growing edge. For example, being a performance artist, I get scared before I get on stage, but it’s really exhilarating, and it requires me to pull from that space that Audre Lorde talks about. I really have to unblock myself and become a channel and a medium for what needs to move through me so that I can deliver the ritual of performance. And it’s exhilarating. I have to confront parts of myself that I wouldn’t otherwise in daily life because I am doing the work of performance art. So I really try to move with what is feeling good. And be really mindful of when I’m not feeling good. I’ve quit jobs that created “security,” you know, biweekly paychecks and health insurance, because I was like: this is making me unhappy. And my reaction to this is making me unhappy. I need to switch up who I am inside of this and also where I am so that I can feel good and be good inside of my life. amb. We are kindred in this. Taja. The last thing I’ll say about cultivating pleasure—burlesque is a really big part of that. It’s not my main genre of performance. I identify as a multimedia interdisciplinary performance artist, because it’s performance, it’s visual, it’s installation, it’s some shit in between. It’s a little amorphous, but people are very familiar with my performance work and less so the burlesque. The burlesque stuff has not been at the forefront until more recently. But I really enjoy being an ecdysiast, that’s what we call it: an ecdysiast. The art of the striptease. amb. Okay: pleasure vocabulary! Taja. Burlesque informs my work conceptually. Like, even for my piece This Ain’t a Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-membering, I employ beauty as reverence, you know? It’s a performance piece honoring ancestors whose lives were taken because of state-sanctioned violence. In the Bag Lady Manifesta, my costuming, what I’m doing with trash bags, it’s an item that we know we’re supposed to throw away, but for me, repurposing them or recycling them, one, it’s a call for what we need to do in our communities and in our world, and it’s basically a metaphor for oppression. How [do] we transform our reality to create beauty and reverence? How do we hold on and also repurpose the shit to create the world that we wanna live in?

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Spain was, therefore, feared and resented, and exaggerated tales of the Inquisition spread through the rest of Europe, which was itself in the violent throes of a major transformation. By the sixteenth century a different kind of civilization was slowly emerging in Europe, based on new technologies and the constant reinvestment of capital. This would ultimately free the continent from many of the restrictions of agrarian society. Instead of focusing on the preservation of past achievements, Western people were acquiring the confidence to look to the future. Where older cultures had required people to remain within carefully defined limits, pioneers like Columbus were encouraging them to venture beyond the known world, where they discovered that they not only survived but prospered. Inventions were occurring simultaneously in many different fields; none of them seemed particularly momentous at the time, but their cumulative effect was decisive. 29 Specialists in one discipline found that they benefited from discoveries made in others. By 1600 innovations were occurring on such a scale and in so many areas at once that progress had become irreversible. Religion would either have to adapt to these developments or become irrelevant. By the early seventeenth century, the Dutch had created the building blocks of Western capitalism. 30 In the joint-stock company, members pooled their capital contributions and placed them on a permanent basis under common management, which gave a colonial or trading venture abroad resources and security far greater than one person could provide. The first municipal bank in Amsterdam offered efficient, inexpensive, and safe access to deposits, money transfers, and payment services both at home and in the growing international market. Finally, the stock exchange gave merchants a center where they could trade in all kinds of commodities. These institutions, over which the church had no control, would acquire a dynamic of their own and, as the market economy developed, would increasingly undermine old agrarian structures and enable the commercial classes to develop their own power base. Successful merchants, artisans, and manufacturers would become powerful enough to participate in the politics that had formerly been the preserve of the aristocracy, even to the point of playing off one noble faction against another. They tended to ally themselves with those kings who were trying to build strong centralized monarchies, since this would facilitate trade.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  A pressure group rather than a political party, its objective was nothing less than “the full redemption of Israel and the entire world.” 71 As a “holy people,” Israel was not bound by UN resolutions or international law. Gush’s ultimate plan was to colonize the entire West Bank and transplant hundreds of thousands of Jews into the occupied territories. To make their point, they organized hikes and rallies in the West Bank, and on Independence Day 1975 nearly twenty thousand armed Jews attended a West Bank “picnic,” marching militantly from one location to another. 72 The Gush experienced their marches, battles with the army, and illegal squats as rituals that brought them a sense of ecstasy and release. 73 The fact that they attracted so much secularist support showed that they were tapping into nationalistic passions that were felt just as strongly by Israelis who had no time at all for religion. They could also draw on the Western tradition of natural human rights that had long declared that an endangered people—and after the October War, who, they asked, could deny that Israelis were endangered?— were entitled to settle in “vacant” land. Their sacred task was to ensure that it was truly “empty.” When the Likud party led by Menachem Begin defeated Labor in the 1977 elections and declared its commitment to Israeli settlement on both sides of the Jordan, Kookists believed that God was at work. But the honeymoon was short-lived. On November 20, 1977, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt made his historic journey to Jerusalem to initiate a peace process, and the following year Begin and Sadat, two former terrorists, signed the Camp David Accords: Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for Egypt’s formal recognition of the State of Israel. Observing this unexpected development, many Western people concluded that secular pragmatism would prevail after all. The Iranian Revolution shattered that hope. Western politicians had regarded Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi as a progressive leader and had put their muscle behind his regime, regardless of the fact that he had no legitimacy among his own people. Iranians were in fact experiencing the structural violence of “the West and the Rest” in an acute form. Independence, democracy, human rights, and national self- determination were for “the West”; but for Iranians, violence, domination, exploitation, and tyranny were to be the order of the day. In 1953 a coup organized by the CIA and British Intelligence had unseated the secular nationalist premier Muhammad Musaddiq (who had tried to nationalize the Iranian oil industry) and reinstated the shah. This event showed Iranians how little they could command their own destiny. After 1953, like the British before them, the United States controlled the monarch and Iran’s oil reserves, demanding diplomatic privileges and trade concessions. American businessmen and consultants poured into the country, and though a few Iranians benefited from the boom, most did not.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Millennia of fighting large aggressive animals meant that these hunting parties became tightly bonded teams that were the seeds of our modern armies, ready to risk everything for the common good and to protect their fellows in moments of danger. 24 And there was one more conflicting emotion to be reconciled: they probably loved the excitement and intensity of the hunt. Here again the limbic system comes into play. The prospect of killing may stir our empathy, but in the very acts of hunting, raiding, and battling, this same seat of emotions is awash in serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for the sensation of ecstasy that we associate with some forms of spiritual experience. So it happened that these violent pursuits came to be perceived as sacred activities, however bizarre that may seem to our understanding of religion. People, especially men, experienced a strong bond with their fellow warriors, a heady feeling of altruism at putting their lives at risk for others and of being more fully alive. This response to violence persists in our nature. The New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges has aptly described war as “a force that gives us meaning”: War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but meaning. And tragically war is sometimes the most powerful way in human society to achieve meaning. 25 It may be too that as they give free rein to the aggressive impulses from the deepest region of their brains, warriors feel in tune with the most elemental and inexorable dynamics of existence, those of life and death. Put another way, war is a means of surrender to reptilian ruthlessness, one of the strongest of human drives, without being troubled by the self-critical nudges of the neocortex. The warrior, therefore, experiences in battle the transcendence that others find in ritual, sometimes to pathological effect. Psychiatrists who treat war veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have noted that in the destruction of other people, soldiers can experience a self-affirmation that is almost erotic. Yet afterward, as they struggle to disentangle their emotions of pity and ruthlessness, PTSD sufferers may find themselves unable to function as coherent human beings. One Vietnam veteran described a photograph of himself holding two severed heads by the hair; the war, he said, was “hell,” a place where “crazy was natural” and everything “out of control,” but, he concluded: The worst thing I can say about myself is that while I was there I was so alive. I loved it the way you can like an adrenaline high, the way you can love your friends, your tight buddies.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  As she sang she removed her hat and held it to her bosom; then she pulled the flower from her lapel and placed it against her cheek, and seemed to weep a little. The audience, in sympathy, let out one huge collective sigh, and bit their lips to hear her boyish tones grow suddenly so tender.All at once, however, she raised her eyes and gazed at us over her knuckles: we saw that she wasn’t weeping at all, but smiling - and then, suddenly, winking, hugely and roguishly. Very swiftly she stepped once again to the front of the stage, and gazed into the stalls for the prettiest girl. When she found her, she raised her hand and the rose went flying over the shimmer of the footlights, over the orchestra-pit, to land in the pretty girl’s lap.We went wild for her then. We roared and stamped and she, all gallant, raised her hat to us and, waving, took her leave. We called for her, but there were no more encores. The curtain fell, the orchestra played; Tricky struck his gavel upon his table, blew out his candle, and it was the interval.I peered, blinking, into the seats below, trying to catch sight of the girl who had been thrown the flower. I could not think of anything more wonderful, at that moment, than to receive a rose from Kitty Butler’s hand.I had gone to the Palace, like everyone else that night, to see Gully Sutherland; but when he made his appearance at last - mopping his brow with a giant spotted handkerchief, complaining about the Canterbury heat and sending the audience into fits of sweaty laughter with his comical songs and his face-pulling - I found that, after all, I hadn’t the heart for him. I wished only that Miss Butler would stride upon the stage again, to fix us with her elegant, arrogant gaze - to sing to us about champagne, and shouting ‘Hurrah!’ at the races. The thought made me restless. At last Alice - who was laughing at Gully’s grimaces as loudly as everybody else - put her mouth to my ear: ‘What’s up with you?’‘I’m hot,’ I said; and then: ‘I’m going downstairs.’ And while she sat on for the rest of the turn, I went slowly down to the empty lobby - there to stand with my cheek against the cool glass of the door, and to sing again, to myself, Miss Butler’s song, ‘Sweethearts and Wives’.Soon there came the roars and stamps that meant the end of Gully’s set; and after a moment Alice appeared, still fanning herself with her bonnet, and blowing at the dampened curls which clung to her pink cheeks.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  At Quilter Street we all rose early, and bathed and washed our hair and dressed - it was like getting ready for a wedding. I very gallantly decided not to risk my trousers on the crowd - socialists having such a poor name already; instead, I wore a suit of navy-blue, with scarlet frogging on the coat, and a matching necktie, and a billycock hat. As ladies’ outfits went, it was a smart one; even so, I found myself twitching irritably at my skirts as I paced the parlour waiting for Flo - and was soon joined by Ralph, who was dressed up stiff as a clerk, and kept pulling at his collar where it chafed against his throat.Florence herself wore the damson-coloured suit I so admired: I bought a flower for her, on the walk from Bethnal Green, and pinned it to her jacket. It was a daisy, big as a fist, and shone when the sun struck it, like a lamp. ‘You shall certainly,’ she said to me, ‘not lose me in that.’Victoria Park itself we found transformed. Workmen had been busy raising tents and platforms and stalls all through the weekend, and there were strings of flags and banners at every tree, and stall-holders already setting up their tables and displays. Florence had about a dozen lists of duties upon her, and now produced them, then went off to find Mrs Macey of the Guild. Ralph and I picked our way through all the drooping bunting, to find the tent he was to speak in. It turned out to be the biggest of the lot: ‘There’ll be room for seven hundred people in here, at the least!’ the workmen told us cheerfully, as they filled it with chairs. That made it greater than some of the halls I had used to play at; and when Ralph heard it, he turned very pale, and retired to a bench for another reading of his speech.After that, I took Cyril and wandered about, gazing at whatever caught my eye and stopping to chat with girls I recognised, lending a hand with fluttering tablecloths, splitting boxes, awkward rosettes. There were speakers and exhibitions there, it seemed to me, for every queer or philanthropic society and cause you could imagine - trade unionists and suffragists, Christian Scientists, Christian Socialists, Jewish Socialists, Irish Socialists, anarchists, vegetarians ... ‘Ain’t this marvellous?’ I heard as I walked, from friends and strangers alike. ‘Did you ever see a sight like this?’ One woman gave me a sash of satin to pin about my hat; I fastened it to Cyril’s frock instead, and when people saw him in the colours of the SDF, they smiled and shook his hand: ‘Hallo, comrade!’‘Won’t he remember this day, when he’s grown!’ said a man, as he touched Cyril’s head and gave him a penny.