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.

Page 29 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  George’s school and regularly invited students to his home, lending them books. He cultivated an atmosphere of scholarship, rather like the humanist circles of schoolteachers and their former pupils that would become such a feature of the educational landscape in the second half of the sixteenth century. Like the Schalbes, Luther later wanted him also to witness his first Mass. 31 The relationship between the younger and the older man continued long beyond Luther’s schooldays in Eisenach, into his first years at university and after his decision to become a monk. It seems to have faded, however, after Luther’s departure to Wittenberg, and Luther wrote to reassure his friend that although he thought “a cold and proud north wind had extinguished all warmth of love,” in fact his silence was simply because he had no “time or leisure” to write, an explanation that may not have set the old man’s mind at rest. 32 His days at Eisenach certainly made a lasting impression, and it was through the Schalbes that Luther heard about another figure who would later become significant to him: a renegade Franciscan monk named Johann Hilten. 33 In the 1470s Hilten had started making apocalyptic prophecies, warning of Turkish power and criticizing monasticism openly. He ended up imprisoned in a cell in Eisenach, where, according to later Lutheran propagandists, he died of starvation around the turn of the century—a victim of the cruelty of the monks. Decades later, in 1529, the story came up again when Luther was visiting his friend Friedrich Myconius. By now the parallels between Luther and Hilten were striking: Both were graduates of Erfurt who had become monks and rebelled against the Church. Moreover, the Turks had just laid siege to Vienna, making Hilten’s warnings suddenly prescient. When he got home, Luther wrote excitedly to Myconius, wanting to find out everything he could about the monk, and begging his friend to leave nothing out. 34 Why was Luther so excited? Hilten had apparently prophesied that soon someone would arise and attack the papacy. In the story Luther first heard from Myconius, the event had been predicted for 1514, but there were other versions that more helpfully foretold the prophet’s arrival in 1516. Later biographers saw this as proof of Luther’s divine mission, even if it was off by a year.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther may have complained to Braun years before about his reluctance to study the discipline, but he had evidently mastered its methods. As his biographer Melchior Adam put it, “he fell upon the crabbed and thorny Logick of that age,” and the skills he acquired gave him a confidence in debate that came from knowing its techniques inside out. 52 — T HEN, on October 31, 1517, Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses. If they were seriously intended to bring about a disputation, their formal function was soon an irrelevance: Nobody ever took up the challenge. Written in the style of his theses against scholasticism, they have a cumulative rhetorical force that is far removed from dispassionate academic writing. The opening insistence on the importance of penance and repentance postulated a whole new religious outlook, not an academic debate, mounting to a crescendo indicting the entire system of devotion based on the calculus of indulgences. The placard print of the theses, its closely printed type covering a whole nearly A3-size sheet, is a powerful document. 53 And yet it is something of a puzzle that the Ninety-five Theses were known as such: Of the two surviving placards, one numbered the theses in batches of twenty-five, and the other presented “Eighty-Seven” theses, because the printer made several mistakes in numbering them. There must have been other printings now lost. Luther insisted later, in a letter to his Nuremberg humanist friend Christoph Scheurl, that he never intended them to be published or read more widely beyond a small circle, and some scholars have taken this as evidence that he did not arrange for them to be printed. But Luther was also explaining why he had omitted to send Scheurl a copy, as he should have done, so his statement is hardly conclusive evidence. 54 When he sent the theses to Johannes Lang in Erfurt, he did not ask his friend to restrict circulation to a small circle. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Luther, even though he later insisted that “the Word did it all,” may have helped things along a little. Certainly it strains credulity that he should have arranged for the theses to be copied out laboriously by hand so many times to send them to his various friends. 55 His letter to Lang, dated with some significance as St. Martin’s Day, November 11, seethes with emotion, announcing that he is sure the theses would not please “your theologians” and defending himself against any accusations of pride and temerity. 56 Written by an unknown German professor in an intellectual backwater, the Ninety-five Theses nonetheless gained widespread attention with startling speed. It was indeed, as Luther wrote to Lang, “unprecedented.” In just two months they were known all over Germany, and were already being met with refutations. In Augsburg the cathedral preacher Urbanus Rhegius remarked that Luther’s “disputation note” was available everywhere.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  14 In the midst of it all Luther also found time to answer a query from the seventeen-year-old Duke Johann Friedrich about whether Christ normally slept. The Gospels did not relate absolutely everything that Christ did, Luther explained, but Christ was a natural man and “He certainly prayed, fasted, went to the toilet, preached and did miracles more times than is mentioned in the gospel.” These natural actions pleased the Father just as much as the greatest miracles, he told the young duke: Christ’s humanity was fully physical, encompassing even defecation. 15 Finally on March 26, in Easter Week, the summons arrived in Wittenberg, ordering Luther to appear at Worms to give “information about the doctrines and the books…produced by you.” 16 It did not specify that he had to recant. 17 Luther, who was not a hoarder, chose to keep this document and it would pass down through the family. He knew that this was a historic moment. 18 — L UTHER undertook the journey to Worms setting out on April 2 with a group of friends and supporters. There was the fellow Augustinian every brother was required to take with them (Johannes Petzensteiner was chosen); Peter Suave, a young Pomeranian nobleman; probably Thomas Blaurer, an enthusiastic follower of Luther who was studying at Wittenberg; Luther’s old friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf; and Caspar Sturm, the imperial herald, who had traveled to Wittenberg to summon Luther to Worms—he later became a major supporter of the Reformation. This time Luther did not attempt to walk but traveled in an open carriage, provided by the Wittenberg goldsmith Christian Döring. The Wittenberg town council contributed twenty guilders to Luther’s expenses and his old friend Johannes Lang coughed up a guilder, too, although by the time the travelers reached Gotha, the funds had mostly been spent, as Luther confided to Melanchthon. 19 The little Saxon party must have been conspicuous on the road. Sturm and his servant rode out in front, the herald sporting the imperial eagle on his sleeve, followed by the open wagon with its famous occupant and his companions. Luther was now a celebrity. Crowds thronged to meet him and see the “miracle-man who was so brave as to oppose the Pope and all the world, who held the Pope to be a God against Christ.” Disconcertingly, Myconius tells us, many of those who came to see the monk also assured him that he would be burned as a heretic. 20 Luther received a rapturous reception by the University of Erfurt, where sixty horsemen and the rector rode out to meet him. This must have given Luther immense personal satisfaction, particularly after the bitter conflicts over his doctorate. Even at Leipzig, where his passing stirred less interest, the council at least honored him with a drink of wine. 21 The journey, which lasted ten days, was the opposite of the ignominious progress of the papal bull: It was a triumphal procession.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Karlstadt took the reader through different kinds of detachment, including “yieldedness of intellect” and finally even “letting go of Scripture” itself: Understanding its spirit was more important than the letter of the Word of God. The term he used for this process of detachment was to have a “circumcised heart,” as if true believers must be set apart in tribal fashion. 17 For Luther, it was the conviction that all our works are sinful and that we are saved by God’s grace alone that led to a sense of freedom. If everything we do is tainted with sin, then asceticism has no point; instead we should enjoy God’s creation. His position was both different from medieval Catholicism, which valued renouncing the flesh, or from what would become Calvinism, which was obsessed with disciplining pleasure. For Karlstadt, on the other hand, the aim of Gelassenheit was to arrive at a complete surrender of the self and a merging with God so that the believer becomes “immersed in God’s will.” It is a state of mystical receptivity and openness where the boundaries between oneself and God disappear—as if one were to return to the womb where there is no separation between mother and child. Thus Karlstadt’s striving for Gelassenheit— his tract outlining the different stages for its achievement—came pretty close to the kind of willed state of perfection that Luther rejected. Indeed, Luther would later charge Karlstadt with setting up, just like the monks, “a new kind of mortification, that is, a self-chosen putting to death of the flesh.” 18 — T HIS was the man who, just before Christmas 1521, openly defied the Elector and announced that he would administer Communion in both kinds at New Year in the Castle Church. Cautious and even punctilious by nature, and slow to change, once convinced, he had all the passion of the convert. He believed he was witnessing the triumph of the gospel, and he committed himself utterly to what he termed “the Christian City of Wittenberg.” The academic was becoming a bold popular leader. Whereas earlier he had avoided preaching, now Karlstadt preached frequently and with passion. People remarked that he had become a new man, “such exquisite things did he now preach.” 19 When it became clear that the Elector would be hostile to any “innovations,” Karlstadt ignored him and, on Christmas Day, he invited those present who wished to take Communion to do so, whether or not they had made confession.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Eliot stage circa ninth grade, when I peppered my speech with words I thought sounded British like indeed .) Is that a word, muddy delicious? Kitty said. Mud-luscious, I said. Not no real word, Beverly said, leaning back on both hands, legs crossed. I studied a volleyball arcing white across the gym ceiling and willed it to smash into Beverly’s freakishly round head. It’s squashing together luscious and lush and delicious , and all of it applied to spring mud. It’s poetic license, I said. I think it’s real smart how you learn every word so they come out any time you please, Kitty said. Beverly snorted. I get mud all over Bobby’s truck flaps, and believe you me, delicious don’t figure in. As insults go, it was weak, but Beverly’s facial expression—like she was smelling something—told me to put poetry right back where I’d drug it out from . Shortly after this, my junior high principal had actually warned me that any girl aiming to be a poet was doomed to become—I shit you not— no more than a common prostitute . And so the fantasy went underground, though in high school I’d still hitchhiked two hours to Houston to buy (coincidentally) Bill Knott’s first book, which gave me the dim hope that somewhere, a solitary madman knew just how I felt. Sitting before a living, nose-blowing Bill Knott made all my writer heroes real. It shot voltage through my own poetic leanings, and inside me, some image of myself as a black-turtleneck-clad poet came creaking back to life. The festival must’ve had fifty or sixty podiums, and behind every one stood a poet with a teaching job and a book to offload. They were real, and their ranks looked open. But how to get there? The small U-shaped bar I tended started to feel like a locked corral I needed to jump out of, but which way other than just not here . At the same conference, an unlikely first teacher showed up—a rusty-handed Mississippian named Etheridge Knight, whose debut book had been written in the pen. He was lumbering and black, with a scraggly mustache and a soul patch under his chin. His jaw was lumpy and uneven, with patches of white skin edged in pink—ragged and tear-shaped, as if acid flung in his face had eaten away his color. He spoke of poetry as an oral art (this was pre-poetry-slam America). Without pages, he half-sang the folk tale of Shine, a porter on the Titanic strong enough to swim to safety.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  She moved her hand in a gesture that encompassed not just the hootch but everything around it, the entire war, the mountains, the mean little villages, the trails and trees and rivers and deep misted-over valleys. "You just don't Anow," she said. "You hide in this little fortress, behind wire and sandbags, and you don't know ... Sometimes I want to eat this place. The whole country — the dirt, the death—I just want to swallow it and have it there inside me. That's how I feel. It's like this appetite. I get scared sometimes—lots of times—but it's not bad. You know? I feel close to myself. When I'm out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark—I'm on fire almost — I'm burning away into nothing—but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am. You can't feel like that anywhere else." All this was said without drama, as if to herself, her voice slow and impassive. She was not trying to persuade. For a few moments she looked at Mark Fossie, who seemed to shrink away, then she turned and moved back into the gloom. There was nothing to be done. Rat took Fossie's arm, helped him up, and led him outside. In the darkness there was that flipped-out tribal music, which seemed to come from the earth itself, from the deep rain forest, and a woman's voice rising up in a language beyond translation. Mark Fossie stood rigid. "Do something," he whispered. "I can't just let her go like that." Rat listened for a time, then shook his head. "Man, you must be deaf. She's already gone." Rat Kiley stopped there, almost in midsentence, which drove Mitchell Sanders crazy. "What next?" he said. "Next?" "The girl. What happened to her?" Rat made a small, tired motion with his shoulders. "Hard to tell for sure. Three, four days later I got orders to report here to Alpha Company. Jumped the first chopper out, that's the last I ever seen of the place. Mary Anne, too." Mitchell Sanders stared at him. "You can't do that." "Do what?" "Jesus Christ, it's against the rules," Sanders said. "Against human nature. This elaborate story, you can't say, Hey, by the way, I don't know the ending. I mean, you got certain obligations." Rat gave a quick smile. "Okay, man, but up to now, ev erything I told you 1s from personal experience, the exact truth. There's a few other things I heard secondhand. Third-hand, actually. From here on it gets to be ... I don't know what the word 1s." "Speculation."

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His criticisms of indulgences had attacked papal authority and the Church hierarchy; now he was questioning something basic to every parishioner’s experience. Not only that, but he went on to attack brotherhoods, the most important of lay religious organizations, which underpinned the whole system of indulgences, with the practice of Christians praying for each other to ensure salvation. These brotherhoods, Luther wrote, were nothing more than excuses for “gluttony, drunkenness, useless squandering of money, howling, yelling, chattering, dancing, and wasting of time….If a sow were made the patron saint of such a brotherhood she would not consent.” 51 Luther was beginning to develop a distinctive German prose style—vivid, energetic, bursting with repeated verbs, and as earthy as Bruegel’s pictures. There was a growing market for such writing. In the months after the Leipzig Debate, printing suddenly exploded. Between 1518 and 1525, publications by Luther in German exceeded those of the seventeen next most prolific authors put together. Indeed, Luther alone was responsible for 20 percent of all the works published in German presses between 1500 and 1530. 52 As a result of his efforts, printing became one of Wittenberg’s new industries, and it would eclipse Leipzig altogether: When Duke Georg decided against the Reformation, and banned the printing of works by Luther, numbers of titles published there annually plummeted from an average of 140 to 43, to the consternation of Leipzig’s printers. Catholic works simply would not sell. 53 It was not only theologians who were turning to print. Now laypeople were weighing in on Luther’s side as well, and their work was finding keen readers. A sign of what was to come was the 1519 publication (in German) of Apology and Christian Reply of an Honorable Lover of the Divine Truth of Holy Writ, by the layman and Nuremberg civic secretary Lazarus Spengler; it was the very pamphlet that the author of Eccius dedolatus claimed Eck wanted to burn. 54 Spengler’s broadside was published in Nuremberg, Basle, Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Augsburg, and went into a second edition. “Whether Luther’s teaching is in accord with Christian ordinance and reason I leave to every rational pious person’s judgment,” Spengler wrote. “But this I know for certain, that although I don’t consider myself to be particularly skilled or intellectually educated in these matters, I have never known any teaching or sermon pierce my mind so strongly, my whole life long.” Those who were attacking Luther’s teaching as “sour beer” were not worthy “to do up his shoelaces.” In particular, Spengler attacked those who argued that Luther’s teaching was suitable only for universities and educated folk: “If [his teaching] is just and godly, then it ought to be shouted and proclaimed publicly, and not just taught in the universities, or to speak more truly, in the Jewish synagogues.”

• From Shunned (2018)

  My car exterior was ravaged, but the stereo worked fine. It still held the CD Ross had apparently been playing the night before. As if by magic, Gloria Estefan serenaded me: Get on your feet Stand up and take some action As I veered into the parking garage, I started singing along. In the days that followed, this melody became my personal anthem. Two weeks later, I sat Ross down in the living room and informed him of my plans. After months of fretting and deliberation, I had turned a corner and set my course toward freedom. My first step was to retain a divorce attorney. Next, I signed a lease for a one-bedroom apartment. I scheduled the movers and planned to leave in just two weeks more. There was no turning back. “My attorney suggested we take a shot at dividing up our assets and liabilities together,” I said. I felt worldly and brash, hearing myself say “my attorney” out loud for the first time and enjoying the new feeling of power it brought me. Ross just looked at me, blinked, then stood up, walked down the hall to his office, and returned with a legal pad. “Okay,” he said, sitting back down on the couch, removing the top from the pen. “What do you want to keep? Or, should I say, what do you want to take?” Aside from the verbal jab, he showed no emotion. I sat still for several moments, marveling at his composure. Inside I felt buoyant and carefree, relieved to have unveiled my stealthy plans. It reminded me of those scenes from National Geographic where a once captive and sedated zebra is released back into the wild, open plains. You watch a few long seconds while it stumbles, takes a breath, gets its bearings, and runs for its life. Then you hope for the best. “I’d like to keep the stereo,” he said. “And I’m not giving up this house.” The house represented my past, the place where I had endured the most distressing period of my life to date. I saw only weeds in the backyard, the list of projects we’d not yet gotten around to. Good riddance, I thought. Walking away from it was easy, like taking off a coat that’s grown tight around the shoulders. It didn’t take long to sort things out.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is almost the exact opposite of Staupitz’s devotional style. The Gotha sermon takes us closer than any other testimony to the religious despair and overwhelming sinfulness that Luther felt as a monk. And it was at this point that he had begun to study Paul’s Letter to the Romans, an intellectual and devotional exercise that would transform his spirituality. T HE YEAR THAT followed the Leipzig Debate was the most intellectually creative period in Luther’s life. The development of his views during this short time was extraordinary. The debate may have looked to contemporaries like a spat between two rival universities, a tussle between men with notoriously big egos, and of interest only to the educated, but by 1520, the “Lutheran matter” was on everyone’s lips, and it concerned not just the Church but politics, and the relationship between the empire and the papacy. That transformation is encapsulated in Luther’s three major works of 1520: To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian . These made the breach with Rome irreparable, and established the foundations of what would eventually become a new Church, splitting Western Christendom forever. What led to this burst of intellectual creativity? To earlier historians, Luther’s story was one of unfolding inevitability: After his “religious awakening” in the tower—an experience they dated to sometime well before 1517—the Reformation followed on straightforwardly as its logical consequence. However, as we have seen, Staupitz and many others shared Luther’s views on God’s mercy and justice, and were also inclined toward the mystical religiosity that characterized his devotion at this time; still, they would not join his attack on the Church. Furthermore, Luther only arrived at his mature theology step by step, as he argued with his antagonists. As we have seen, Luther later dated his spiritual transformation to the period after the Leipzig Debate, and his confident assurance that he now understood the righteousness of God—if he was correct about the date—may explain this release of energy, even if an outsider might think he had reached that intellectual position in 1515 when he lectured on Romans. Whatever the truth about this, something fundamental and new was certainly emerging in Luther as he entered this period of profound creativity, and it involved his devotional practice, his theological orientation, and his closest relationships. First of all, in the wake of the Leipzig Debate, Luther’s attitude to his monastic vocation began to alter. From his early years as a monk, he had been obliged to attend services and perform the “hours,” the repetition of prayers that took a prominent place in a monk’s daily routine and consumed much of his time.

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

  κραυγή, ἡ, (from 4/KPAT, κράζω) a crying, screaming, shrieking, shouting, Lat. clamor, tis ἥδε κραυγή ; Teleclid. Incert. 9; κραυγὴν στῆσαι, θεῖναι Eur. Or. 1510, 1529; ποιεῖν Xen. Cyr. 3.1, 43 κ΄ γίγνεται Lys. 136. 24; in pl., Aeschin. 5. 27; κραυγὴ Καλλιόπης, as an instance of bad taste, cited from Dionys. Eleg. (7) by Arist. Rhet. 3. 2, 4. kpavylas ἵππος, 6, a horse that takes fright at a cry, Hesych. kpavyos, οὔ, 6, a woodpecker, Hesych., who has also κραυγόν᾽ ποιὸς ὄρνις, where the alphab. order requires Kpavyov, ovos, 6. κραῦρα, ἡ, (Kpavpos) fever, a scrofulous disease in swine and cattle, Suid., Phot.; so kpatpos (of uncertain gender) Arist. H. A. 8. 23 :— hence the Verb kpavpdw,—é ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις πυρετός, τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐν τοῖς βουσὶ τὸ κραυρᾶν Ib.; of swine, Ib. 8. 21, 2 :—also a disease among bees, Hesych. kpaupdopat, Pass. to become dry or parched, Philo 2. 174, Dio C. 66. 21. Kpavpos, a, ov, also os, ov Arist. P. A. 2. 9, 13 :—brittle, friable (xpav- pov τὸ τελέως ξηρὸν, ὥστε Kal πεπηγέναι δι᾽ ἔλλειψιν τῆς ὑγρότητος Arist. Gen. et Corr. 2. 2, 6), Plat. Tim. 60C; opp. to γλισχρός and μαλακός Arist. 1]. c.; of meat, θερμότερον ἢ κραυρότερον ἢ μέσως ἔχον (apparently) dry and cold, Eubul. ’Apaadé. τ. κραυρότηξ, ητος, 7, brittleness, opp. to γλισχρότης, Theophr. H. P. io) By adle *kpaw, =ypaw, to eat, only in Gramm. (who quote éxpae or éypae from Callim.) as Root of κράστις, κρέας, Heyne Il. T.8. p. 117. kpedypa, 7, (ερέας, dypéw) a flesh-hook, to take meat out of the pot, Ar. Eq. 772 (ubi v. Schol.), Vesp. 1155, Anaxipp. Ki@ap. 1: generally, a hook to seize or drag by, Lat. harpago, Ar. Eccl. 1002. κρεάγρευτος, ov, tearing off the flesh, Lyc. 759; vulg. κρεάγραπτος. κρεαγρίς, (50s, ἡ, -- κρεάγρα, Dim. only in form, Anth. P. 6. 306. κρεάδιον [a], τό, Dim. of κρέας, a morsel of meat, slice of meat, Ar. Pl. 227, Cephisod. “Ys 2, Xen. Cyr. 1. 4,13; in pl., Ar. Fr. £97, Alex. Kpatev. 1. 15. ‘ κρεᾶ-δοσία, κρεᾶ-δοτέω, collat. forms of xpeod-, C. 1. 1625. 49., 2900. κρεᾶνομέω, fut. ἤσω: pf. κεκρεανόμηκα Isae. 78. 17 :—to distribute flesh, to divide the flesh of a victim among the guests, |. c., Luc. Prom. 20: generally, fo divide, cut piece-meal, Diod. Excerpt. 602. 66, Luc. Prom. 20:—Med. to divide among themselves, Theocr. 26. 24, Sopat. ap. Ath. 702 B. For xpewy-, v. sq. κρεᾶνομία, 7, a distribution of flesh, Lat. visceratio, Theopomp. Hist. 238, Inscr. Att. in Ussing p. 47, Luc. Prom. 5, Ath. 532 D, etc.: a cor- Tupt form “pewvopia occurs in Poll. 1. 34 and Clem. Al.; and κρεωνομέω in Cyrill.; v. Pors. praef. Hec. p. 8. κρεᾶ-νόμος, 6, (νέμων one who distributes the flesh of victims, a carver, Eur. Cycl. 245 :—as Adj. mangling, τέκνων Lyc. 203, cf. 762.

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

  given, wastakenin hand, Hdt. 4. τύ, cf.6.86, 4; (so, 6 λόγος ὥρμηθη, with- out λέγεσθαι, Id. 3.56); but, λόγον, τὸν ὥρμητο λέγειν which he purposed to make, Id.5.50; and with the inf. omitted, μενεήναμεν ὁρμηθέντε we eagerly desired, Od, 4. 282, cf. Soph.O. C. 1068, 2. the object for or after which one goes is in gen., Il. 14. 488., 21.595; also expressed by a Prep., ὁρμᾶσθαί ἐπί τινι Od. το. 214; ἐπί τινα Soph. Aj. 47, etc.; εἴς Twa Xen. Cyr. 7.1, 9; μετά τινος after one, Il. 17. 605 ; so, ὅρμ. ἐπὶ τὸ ἱερόν Hdt. 8. 35; ἐς πύλας Aesch. Theb. 31; πρὸς δόμους Eur. Hipp. 1152 ; and, ὅρμ. ἐπ᾽ ἀλήθειαν Plat. Soph. 228 C; ἐς φυγήν Thuc. 4.14; πρὸς τίσιν Soph. O. C. 1329; πρὸς τὸ κρατεῖν Plat. Rep. 581 A :—rarely c. acc. loci, veprépas πλάκας Soph. O. C. 1576. b. the starting-point is expressed by ἐμ, ὡρμᾶτ᾽ ἐκ θαλάμοιο 1]. 3. 142, cf. 9. 178, Hdt. 3. 98, Plat., etc. ; or ἀπό, Soph. Tr. 156, Plat. Phaedo rot D, etc. :—in historical Prose, ὁρμᾶσθαι éx .. , to start from, begin from, esp. of the place where one carries on any regular operations, ἐνθεῦτεν ὁρμώμενοι living there and going out from thence to do one’s daily work, Hdt. 1. 17; so of a general, making that place his head-quarters or base of operations (cf. ὁρμητήριον), Id. 8.133, cf. 3. 98., 5. 125, al., Thuc. 1. 64., 2. 69, al. ; 50, ὅρμ. ἀπὸ Σάρδεων Xen. An. 1. 2, 5; ἀπ᾿ ἐλασσόνων ὁρμώμενος setting out, beginning with smaller means, Thuc. 2. 65, cf. 1. 144 :—of rivers, ἐμ τῆς Ἴδης opp. rising .., Plat. Legg. 682 B. 8. absol. to rush on, Il. 5. 12., 13. 182, 496, etc., Od. 12. 126, and often in Hom. ; also with ἔγχεϊ, ξίφεσι etc., added, Il. 5. 855:, 17-530. Ὄ. generally, zo hasten, be eager, ὁρμώμενον δὲ μηδαμῶς ἀντισπάσῃς Aesch. Pr. 337, cf. 393; ἀλλ᾽ ἥδε... ὁρμᾶται comes forth, Id. Pers. 151; so of things, 6 λόγος ὥρμηται the report flies abroad, the story goes, Hdt. 3. 56, cf. 7.189; 6 A. ὥρμηται λέγεσθαι Id. 4.16., 6.86,4; τὸ φέγγος ὁρμάσθω πυρός Aesch. Eum. 1029 ; ὕβρις ἀτάρβητος ὁρμᾶται insult goes fearless forth, Soph. Aj. 197. 4. rarely in a really pass. sense, πρὸς θεῶν ὡρμημένος incited by .., Id. El. 7o. δρμειά, 7, v. sub ὁρμιά. Oppevoets, εσσα, ev, having a long stalk, Nic. Th. 840. ὄρμενος or Sppevos, 6, a shoot, sprout, or a stem, stalk, Ath. 62 F, He- sych.: pl. ὄρμενοι, Poll. 6. 615; but also ὄρμενα, Posidipp. Συντρ. 2, cf. A. B. 38, E. M. 161.3. (Cf. ὄρμενος, part. aor. med. of ὄρνυμι.)

• From Shunned (2018)

  No one could reach my front door unannounced. “As for you,” Jerry said, looking at Ross for the first time, “we will meet with you again later. This situation is a reflection on you as the spiritual head of the house, and you have failed to ‘preside over your household in a fine manner.’ We will review your ministerial privileges in the congregation and get back to you.” Ross nodded, passive and accepting whatever discipline might come. I wanted to stand up in his defense and remind them he was not responsible for me. I’d made these choices of my own free will with eyes wide open. Ross shouldn’t be punished for that. But I stopped myself from speaking. Things were changing. We both needed to stand on our own two feet. “Shall we close our meeting with a prayer?” Jerry asked. I couldn’t imagine sitting still for more. “Thank you, no.” And I turned to Ross, who looked at me like I’d gone mad. “I’ll wait for you outside.” It was a shocking change for me to decline their alms, but I was finally freed from their opinions. It was the first time any of us had seen this side of me. I was opening myself to new standards of spirituality. For the first time in my life, I was doing exactly what I wanted, without concern for pleasing others. It was exhilarating. I felt larger than life. And I was terrified. Perhaps I’m getting too full of myself. Please don’t let them be right. But I had to get out of the room, and so I left, retracing my steps through the dark and vacant foyer, welcoming the fresh air and light of the outdoors. Chapter 6 That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidation, then nothing real succeeds. —John Updike “News will travel fast,” Ross said, as he drove us home. “We should tell your parents as soon as possible.” His face was drawn, and his hands gripped the steering wheel. I’d been thinking the same thing. Our conversation with the elders was just the first in a long line of confessions and announcements. “I’ll call them when I get home and see if I can’t stop by later today or tomorrow after work,” I said. I could hardly believe this was happening. In the past twenty-four hours, I had unleashed a plan and was headed downstream, moving fast, bouncing between the rapids. “I think we should tell your parents together,” said Ross. He looked straight ahead as he drove. “Whatever for?” I asked. “I’d think you’d want to avoid that conversation.” “Don’t get me wrong, I dread this whole damn thing. But it feels like the right thing to do.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Rather, it was integral to his thought; his insistence that the true Christians—that is, the evangelicals—had become the chosen people and had displaced the Jews would become fundamental to Protestant identity. It was the central plank of his understanding of the Lutherans’ providential role in history, and to secure it the Jews had to be pushed aside, discredited, and, if necessary, eliminated. They are the better Jews. As he had argued in On the Jews and Their Lies, “We foolish Gentiles, who were not God’s people, are now God’s people. That drives the Jews to distraction and stupidity, and over this they became Not-God’s-people, who were once his people and really should still be.” 43 The Lutherans understand the Old Testament better and their exegesis is superior, Luther claims. Having lost their status as the chosen people and therefore no longer truly “Jews,” the Jews are “even changed into another people altogether, with nothing [of the original] left but a lazy remnant” of foreign rascals or gypsies. 44 I N EARLY A PRIL 1518, Luther set out for Heidelberg, a journey of nearly 250 miles as the crow flies. Staupitz had called a meeting of the Augustinian order for April 25, at which one of Luther’s students, Leonhard Beyer, was to defend forty theses composed by his teacher. Many had advised Luther not to travel: He wrote to Lang that he had been warned that preachers were condemning him from their pulpits and “the people” would try to burn him, but he nonetheless insisted on walking all the way with Beyer and with Urban, the monastery’s messenger. It seems that, at this juncture, he did not anticipate much popular support for his cause. But he was in high spirits. Writing to Spalatin on April 15, six days into the journey, he reported that they had reached Coburg, one of the Elector’s castles. Ever resourceful, and traveling as a mendicant without money, Luther had managed to get the Elector’s man Degenhart Pfeffinger—who had unwisely joined them at an inn—to pay for all the brothers’ meals: As Luther quipped to Spalatin, he always enjoyed separating a rich man from his cash. 1 He hoped to get the castellan to pay for their stay at Coburg as well. But the footsore monk had also realized the error of his ways, and resorted to traveling by wagon: He had sinned, he joked, “since I determined to go on foot” and had failed, but as he had repented, he had no need to purchase an indulgence. 2 It would be a good year for wine, he added, as he passed through the premium vineyards of southern Germany. At Würzburg, Lang joined the travelers for the leg to Heidelberg. 3 The Heidelberg Debate offered Luther a chance to make his theology more widely known within the Augustinians. But Staupitz was playing a dangerous game.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Elector relented but insisted that the first paragraph of Luther’s “Reflections,” which insinuated that the papal breve condemning his work was a forgery, was blacked out. This was not the first time that Luther had acted quickly, before the authorities could intervene. Just a few months earlier, when the bishop of Brandenburg had stepped in to stop the publication of Luther’s Sermon on Indulgences and Grace, his first work in German for a wide popular audience, Luther ensured that it was already on sale; by 1520 there would be twenty-five printings in all major cities in Germany. 47 Now he disingenuously explained to Spalatin that he had arranged for the Appellation to Leo to be printed, but had then agreed with the printer to buy up all the stock so as to stop publication, but that when he turned up with the money the copies had all been sold. 48 With his every action, therefore, Luther was driving the conflict with Rome forward. His use of print was tactically brilliant: He knew exactly how to forestall censorship and protect his ideas by spreading them as widely as possible, each new work marking yet another radical advance delivered to an audience that was hungry for more. The logic of the market and its craving for novelty was part of what propelled Luther’s cause. Published largely in Latin, his writings were still mainly directed at a clerical, intellectual elite, but they were now also being translated. No one had previously used print to such devastating effect. But there were deeper reasons for Luther’s refusal to compromise. His letters at this time, especially those to Spalatin, convey a sense of exaltation and exhilaration as he came to accept that he was likely to die a martyr. The letters written before Augsburg are marked by a sense of urgency: “This affair has to be handled in a great hurry. They have given me only a short time,” or “Fast action is necessary here. The days fly by and the appointed day draws near.” 49 All this increased the singular importance of the meeting. In May 1518, when he dedicated his explanations of the Ninety-five Theses to Staupitz, he had written that “only one thing is left, my poor, weak little bit of body, worn out by constant abuse…if they want to take that away by force or intrigue, they will only make me poorer of my life by one or two hours.”

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

  σεύω, with o doubled after the augm., as always in Hom. (except in ἐξ-εσύθη 1]. 5. 293): Ion. impf. σεύεσκε Q. Sm. 2. 353: aor. ἔσσευα ll.; Ep. also σεῦα 20. 189 :—Med., subj. cevavra 11. 415: impf. ἐσ- σεύοντο 2. 808: aor. ἐσσεύαντο 1]. ; Ep. also σεύατο Ib. :—Pass., aor. ἐσύθην [Ὁ] Eur. Hel. 1302 (ἐέ-- IL, v. supr.), ἐσσύθην Soph. Aj. 294, poét. also σύθην Aesch. Pr. 135, part. συθείς Id. Theb. 942, Pers. 865, Soph. O. C. 119 (ail lyr.), but in iamb., O. T. 446:—pf. (with pres. sense) ἔσσὕμαι, part. ἐσσύμενος (not —pévos), Adv. ἐσσύμένως Hom. :—to these must be added poét. aor. 2 (with plqpf. form) ἐσσύμην [Ὁ], 2 sing. ἔσσυο for ἔσσυσο Il. 16. 585, Od. 9. 447; 3 sing. ἔσσῦτο, Ep. σύτο Hom, ἐπέ- auto Eur. Hel. 1163, Phoen. 1065; part. σύμενος Aesch. Ag. 746, Eum. 1007, cf. 786, 816 (all lyr.):—besides these forms, we find σεῦται, 3 sing. of a syncop. pres. pass., Soph. Tr. 645 ; also σοῦμαι (Dor. σῶμαι Epilyc. Kwpaa. 2), σοῦνται Aesch. Pers. 25 ; imperat. σοῦ Ar. Vesp. 209 ; σούσθω Soph. Aj.1414; σοῦσθε Aesch. Theb. 31, Ar. Vesp. 458, etc. ; inf. σοῦσθαι Plut. 2. 362 D:—Hesych. cites an imperat. σύθι or σῦθι. (From 4/2Y, i.e. SFE or ZEF, whence also perh. come σοβ-ή (cauda), coB-éw, σοβ-αρός, cf. O. N. svip-a, O.H.G. sweif (schweif).) Poét. Verb (used here and there in late Prose), to put in quick motion, drive: esp., 1. to hunt, chase, Διωνύσοιο τιθήνας σεῦε κατ᾽ ἠγαθέην Νυσήιον 1]. 6.133: to drive away, σεῦεν κύνας ἄλ- λυδις ἄλλῃ πυκνῇσιν λιθάδεσσιν Od. 14. 35 :—more often in Med., ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε κάπριον ἀμφὶ κύνες σεύωνται Il. 11. 415, cf. 549., 3. 20; ὥς τ᾽... ἄγριον αἶγα ἐσσεύαντο κύνες 15. 272, cf. 20. 148; metaph., σ. κακότητα ἀπὸ καρήνου h. Hom. 7.12; θάμβος με σ. Orph. Lith. 531. 2. to set on, let loose at, Ste πού Tis θηρητὴρ κύνας .. σεύῃ ἐπ᾽ ἀγροτέρῳ συΐ Il. 11. 293. 8. to drive or hurry away to or from a place, Αἰνείαν δ᾽ ἔσσευεν ἀπὸ χθονός 1]. 20. 3253 ἵππους éx πεδίοιο 15. 681; [τινὰ] κατ᾽ ᾿Ιδαίων ὀρέων 20. 180 :---ο. inf. to urge on, set to work, ἡμιόνους ποταμὸν παρὰ δινήεντα τρώγειν ... Od. 6. 8g :—me- taph., σ. νόον πρὸς μόχθον Anth. Ρ. 1. 93. 4. of things, to ¢hrow, hurl, [τὸν δὲ] ὅλμον ὡς ἔσσευε κυλίνδεσθαι threw him so that he rolled, Il. 11.147; στρόμβον δ᾽ ὡς ἔσσευε βαλών 14. 4133 also, αἷμα ἔσσευα (v. sub ἀτρεκής) 5. 208; ν. infr. 11. 1. II. Pass. and Med. to be put in quick motion, and so, to run, rusk, dart or shoot along, ἐπὶ τεύχεα to arms, 2. 808; ἐπὶ κοῖτον Od. 14. 456; νέρθε δὲ ποσσὶν ἔσσυμαι 1]. 13. 70; σεύατ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἀνὰ ἄστυ 6. 505; σεύατ᾽ ἔπεϊτ᾽ ἐπὶ κῦμα Od. 5. 51. cf. Il. 14. 227; κατ᾽ ἀμαξιτόν 22.146; παρ᾽ ἐρινέον 11. 167; ἀμφ᾽ ᾿Οδυσῆα 11. 419; ἰθὺς Λυκίων τό. 585 ; διὰ σπέος Od. 9. 447; so in Trag., ἐκτόπιος συθείς having gone, departed, opp. to παρών, Soph, O. C. 119; ἀφ᾽ ἑστίας Aesch. Pers. 865 ; ἐκ ναοῦ, ἐξ ἕδρας Eur. I, T. 1294, etc.; σύθην δ᾽ ἀπέδιλος ὄχῳ πτερωτῷ Aesch. Pr. 135 ; κατὰ yas σύμεναι Id. Eum. 1007, cf. Ag.746; ἀνὰ νάπη Eur. Hel. 1302: —of things, αἷμα σύτο shot or gushed out, 1]. 21.167; ψυχὴ κατ᾽ .. ὠτειλὴν ἔσσυτο 14. 5193; ἐκ πυρὸς συθεὶς σίδηρος Id. Theb. 942 ; ἐσύθη ἔξω πῦον Aretae. Caus. Μ. Diut. 1. 9. 2. c. inf. to hasten, speed, ὅτε σεύαιτο διώκειν when he hasted to pursue, 1]. 17. 463; ὄφρα ὕλη σεύαιτο καήμεναι that the wood might speed to the burning, i.e. burn up quickly, Il. 23. 198, cf. 210; ἔσσυται κελαδῆσαι is eager to sing of, Pind. I. 8 (7). 133. 3. metaph. fo be eager, have longings, θυμὸς ἔσσυται Od. το. 484; esp.in pf. part. ἐσσύμενος used as Adj. (and there- fore not written ἐσσυμένος), ν. sub voce.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "Straight on. It's a fact." Rat's voice squeaked a little. He paused and looked at his hands. "Listen, the guy sends her the money. Flies her over. This cute blonde—just a kid, just barely out of high school—she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags. Comes right out to the boonies. I swear to God, man, she's got on culottes. White culottes and this sexy pink sweater. There she is." I remember Mitchell Sanders folding his arms. He looked over at me for a second, not quite grinning, not saying a word, but I could read the amusement in his eyes. Rat saw it, too. "No lie," he muttered. "Culottes." When he first arrived in-country, before joining Alpha Company, Rat had been assigned to a small medical detachment up in the mountains west of Chu Lai, near the village of Tra Bong, where along with eight other enlisted men he ran an aid station that provided basic emergency and trauma care. Casualties were flown in by helicopter, stabilized, then shipped out to hospitals in Chu Lai or Danang. It was gory work, Rat said, but predictable. Amputations, mostly—legs and feet. The area was heavily mined, thick with Bouncing Betties and homemade booby traps. For a medic, though, it was ideal duty, and Rat counted himself lucky. There was plenty of cold beer, three hot meals a day, a tin roof over his head. No humping at all. No officers, either. You could let your hair grow, he said, and you didn't have to polish your boots or snap off salutes or put up with the usual rear-echelon nonsense. The highest ranking NCO was an E-6 named Eddie Diamond, whose pleasures ran from dope to Darvon, and except for a rare field inspection there was no such thing as military discipline. As Rat described it, the compound was situated at the top of a flat- crested hill along the northern outskirts of Tra Bong. At one end was a small dirt helipad; at the other end, in a rough semicircle, the mess hall and medical hootches overlooked a river called the Song Tra Bong. Surrounding the place were tangled rolls of concertina wire, with bunkers and reinforced firing positions at staggered intervals, and base security was provided by a mixed unit of RFs, PFs, and ARVN infantry. Which is to say virtually no

• From Shunned (2018)

  Ross used that time to watch sports on TV; I pulled out my laptop and composed a letter to an important client. During that day’s sermon, my mind had drifted to a complex business proposal I’d been formulating with my boss, and the perfect words to describe it had come to me. I’d written it down on the back cover of my Watchtower and was happy to have captured it in a typed document. “Excuse me,” Ross said, jolting the emergency brake, “I don’t recall anyone forcing you to work on a Sunday.” It was a conversation we’d been having with greater frequency. My work at the bank had evolved into more than just a job. The inner workings of business —at least the consumer side of finance—had been revealed to me, and I found it fascinating. I sat in on marketing meetings, where promotional storyboards were presented and ad campaigns were analyzed. I was regularly asked to weigh in on the message of these campaigns, and my clients’ feedback indicated that I had solid input to offer. There were pricing models to consider, which factored in the current cost of funds and reserves for loan loss, and I was beginning to see the bigger picture of how the ebb and flow of politics and world events impacted the economy and our profits. The term ‘prime lending rate’ on the six o’clock news held a whole new meaning. I was beginning to understand why people cared about it. Observing how my efforts made direct impact on our group’s bottom line had a visceral effect on me. Being part of a winning team was fun. Every day held something new and engaging. Our start-up initiatives were seeing impressive wins and received the adulation of the bank president. One day, John even took me along to meet the president in his marble office at the top of the bank tower. Spending ten minutes on a Sunday to write a business letter did not feel like an inconvenience to me. “Let’s drop this argument and go enjoy our friends, okay?” I said to Ross. We got out of the car and started walking in silence toward Jerry and Julia’s house. Scott was playing basketball in the driveway with eight other brothers. Standing at the foul line, he slowly bounced the ball, preparing to take a free throw. As we approached the sidewalk, Ross yelled out, “Brick!” His concentration interrupted, Scott turned and smiled. Ross handed me his car keys and wallet. “I’ll be in soon,” he said.

• From Shunned (2018)

  That week unfolded with excitement and ease. David made good on his promise, returning the contract to me within days, and our in-house risk managers supported my request for a rush review. The final contract would be ready to sign by the end of the week. Mid-Town Bank was a short walk from my apartment. I parked my car at home and floated down Clark Street toward the Friday afternoon meeting, poised and confident, breath visible with each step. The encounter went off without a hitch. Catherine and I emerged with the signed contract and a clear plan to move forward. “Cheers,” she said, raising her glass of chardonnay in the neighborhood bar where we went afterward. “I never lost faith this day would come.” We clinked glasses. I thanked her for her support and sipped my wine. I was practically levitating off the barstool with relief. The stalemate had ended. Catherine used her cell phone to share the good news with Richard, paid the tab, and departed for her long drive to the suburbs. I walked toward home along Lincoln Park West, turning back toward Clark Street in time to visit my favorite shoe boutique. I told the owner I was celebrating, and he got right into the swing of things, helping me select a new pair of pumps as my reward. It was five o’clock when I walked into my apartment, no one but my cat to party with. Richard had left a message congratulating me. The first person I called to share my good news with was Cindy. She would be assigned to manage the relationship, and we were thrilled about the chance to roll up our sleeves and work on a specific project together. She was still at the office, where a large whiteboard was kept with an ever-growing list of new sales for each month. She promised to post my win “with your name next to it, so everyone knows.” My ego loved that idea. Next, I phoned Steve. The month before, I’d sent him a birthday card as a small peace offering. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him as a friend. He’d done so much to help me get acclimated in Chicago, and I really did care about him. Out of that gesture had come a casual dinner the week before, where we’d both admitted that friendship suited us way better than romance. He had always listened patiently to my work anxieties, and I knew he would be happy about my news. He promised to buy me dinner sometime in the next month to celebrate. “Or maybe you should pay,” he said. “You’re the one getting the big fat commission check.” And I laughed. Without the burden of romantic expectations, we were much freer with each other. So there I was, alone in my apartment. I took a long, hot shower then opened a bottle of wine.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It enabled him to accept the possibility of martyrdom, without embracing it as a destiny. But he also initiated an understanding of events that would brook no argument. At Worms, God’s Word had been at work, an authority that trumped all emperors and princes. Luther had appealed to the emperor against the Pope, and though he had escaped martyrdom, he had lost; now both imperial and papal power were ranged against him. On May 26, the day after the conclusion of the Diet, and when Luther had long ago left town, the emperor signed the Edict of Worms, which declared Luther an outlaw, forbade anyone to house him or eat with him, and banned the sale, reading, possession, or printing of his works. Luther had known what was coming, but he was in an exhilarated mood. Comparing his travails at Worms with Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, he had written to Cranach on April 28, two days after leaving Worms: “For a little while we must suffer and be silent. A little time, and you will not see me again; a little more time and you will see me.” 74 N O ONE WAS to know Luther’s whereabouts. After the excitement of Worms, where the great princes of the empire had lined up to meet him, where he had been surrounded by supporters and friends from dawn till dusk, and where his every word had been noted and its significance weighed, Luther was now alone. On May 4, having visited his relatives in Möhra on his way back from the Diet, Luther had been kidnapped near Burg Altenstein and brought by a circuitous route to Wartburg Castle, towering high up above Eisenach, hidden in the woods. The castle walls are hewn into the rock of the hills with views on three sides; to Luther it felt as if he were in the kingdom of the birds. The monk who was now famous throughout the empire had returned to where, as a schoolboy, he had stolen strawberries in the woods, and where his mother’s family still lived. 1 The kidnapping had been staged by the Elector, who feared the emperor’s wrath for harboring a man the Edict of Worms had now declared a “stubborn schismatic and public heretic.” 2 So he was kept in the Wartburg in disguise. Dressed in the clothes of a knight, Luther let his tonsure grow out, and was no longer clean-shaven. The figure-hugging attire, with hose designed to show off well-turned legs, fine linen shirt, doublet, and showy codpiece, must have been a shock for a monk used to wearing a shapeless woolen cassock belted at the waist. When he secretly returned to Wittenberg in December, six months later, his friends did not at first recognize him: In his riding coat he looked like a nobleman with “a thick beard over his whole mouth and cheeks.” 3 37. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther as Junker Jörg, 1522.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  That’s pretty much how the reading went, one balled-up page after another, mingled with lyric poems of great finish and hilarity. The audience hooted in wild and rolling waves. Guys in the front row started throwing the paper balls back, which made Knott hump even deeper in his oversize clothes as if dodging hurled tomatoes. At the end, a guy in a tie next to me said, I used to think poets shouldn’t get public grants, but this guy really can’t do anything else. When Knott left the stage, people hollered for him to come back. I sat on the hard floor almost aquiver. Writers had heretofore been mythical to me as griffins—winged, otherworldly creatures you had to conjure from the hard-to-find pages they left behind. That was partly why I’d not tried too hard to become one: it was like deciding to be a cowgirl or a maenad. In our town, the only bookstores sold gold-rimmed Bibles big as coffee tables and plastic dashboard figurines of Jesus—flaming heart all day-glo orange. Yet I’d believed—through grade school—Mother’s lie that poetry was a viable profession. As a toddler, Mother’s slate-blue volume of Shakespeare served as my booster seat, and in grade school, I memorized speeches she’d read aloud, to distract or engage her. Picture a bedridden woman with an ice pack balanced on her throbbing head while a girl—age seven, draped in a bedsheet and wearing a cardboard crown—recites Macbeth as Lady M. scrubs blood off: Out, out, damn spot… Then social mores had intervened. A distinct scene from junior high flushes vividly back. Girls sitting out of rotation volleyball in gym class stared at me all gap-mouthed when—of a rainy spring day—I spouted e. e. cummings. Through open green gym doors, sheets of rain erased the parking lot we normally stood staring at as if it were a refrigerator about to manifest food. The poem started: in Just-: spring when the world is mud- luscious… As I went on, Kitty Stanley sat cross-legged in black gym shorts and white blouse, peeling fuchsia polish off her thumbnail with a watchmaker’s precision. She was a mouth breather, Kitty, whose blond bouffant hairdo featured above her bangs a yarn bow the color of a kumquat. That it? Beverly said. Her black-lined gaze looked like an old-timey bandit mask. Indeed, I said. (This was my assholish T. S. Eliot stage circa ninth grade, when I peppered my speech with words I thought sounded British like indeed.) Is that a word, muddy delicious? Kitty said. Mud-luscious, I said. Not no real word, Beverly said, leaning back on both hands, legs crossed. I studied a volleyball arcing white across the gym ceiling and willed it to smash into Beverly’s freakishly round head. It’s squashing together luscious and lush and delicious, and all of it applied to spring mud. It’s poetic license, I said. I think it’s real smart how you learn every word so they come out any time you please, Kitty said.