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 76 of 182 · 20 per page

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He embarked on a major restructuring of the company, which led to the departure of over a thousand employees. He started filling the executive ranks with Paramount people, most notably Jeffrey Katzenberg (b. 1950), who had worked as Eisner’s right-hand man at Paramount and was now named chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Katzenberg could be abrasive and downright rude, but no one in Hollywood was more efficient or worked harder. He simply got things done. Within months Disney began to churn out a remarkable series of hits, adhering to Eisner’s formula. Fifteen of its first seventeen films (such as Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Who Framed Roger Rabbit ) generated profits, a run of success almost unheard of for any studio in Hollywood. One day, as Eisner explored the Burbank lot with Wells, they entered the Disney library and discovered hundreds of cartoons from the golden era that had never been shown. There on endless shelves were stored all of the great Disney classic animated hits. Eisner’s eyes lit up at the sight of this treasure. He could reissue all of these cartoons and animated films on video (the home video market was in the midst of exploding) and it would be pure profit. Based on these cartoons, the company could create stores to market the various Disney characters. Disney was a virtual gold mine waiting to be exploited, and Eisner would make the most of this. Soon the stores opened, the videos sold like crazy, the film hits kept pumping profit into the company, and Disney’s stock price soared. It had replaced Paramount as the hottest film studio in town. Wanting to cultivate a more public presence, Eisner decided to revive the old The Wonderful World of Disney , an hourlong television show from the fifties and sixties hosted by Walt Disney himself. This time Eisner would be the host. He was not a natural in front of the camera, but he felt audiences would grow to like him. He could be comforting to children, like Walt himself. In fact, he began to feel the two of them were somehow magically connected, as if he were more than just the head of the corporation but rather the natural son and successor to Walt Disney himself. Despite all his success, however, the old restlessness returned. He needed a new venture, a bigger challenge, and soon he found it. The Walt Disney Company had plans to create a new theme park in Europe. The last one to open, Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, had been a success. Those in charge of theme parks had settled upon two potential sites for the new Disneyland—one near Barcelona, Spain, the other near Paris. Although the Barcelona site made more economic sense, since the weather there was much better, Eisner chose the French site. This was going to be more than a theme park. This was going to be a cultural statement.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  But as this crisis period fades and begins to merge into the revolutionary period, we often detect rising levels of excitement, as those who are young and particularly hungry for something new can sense the changes coming that they have set up in their own way. It seems that we are living through such a crisis period, with a generation that is experiencing it in its key phase in life. Although we cannot see how close we might be to the end of this period, such times never last too long, because the human spirit will not tolerate them. Some unifying belief system is in gestation, and some new values are being generated that we cannot yet see. At the core of this pattern is a continual back-and-forth rhythm that comes from emerging generations reacting against the imbalances and mistakes of the previous generation. If we go back four generations in our own time we can clearly see this. We start with the silent generation. As children experiencing the Great Depression and as adults coming of age during World War II and the postwar period, they became rather cautious and conservative, valuing stability, material comforts, and fitting tightly into the group. The next generation, the baby boomers, found the conformity of their parents rather stifling. Emerging in the 1960s, and not haunted by the harsh financial realities of their parents, this generation valued personal expression, having adventures, and being idealistic. This was followed by Generation X, which was marked by the chaos of the 1960s and the ensuing social and political scandals. Coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, it was pragmatic and confrontational, valuing individualism and self-reliance. This generation reacted against the hypocrisies and impracticalities in their parents’ idealism. This was followed by the millennial generation. Traumatized by terrorism and a financial crisis, they reacted against the individualism of the last generation, craving security and teamwork, with a noted dislike of conflict and confrontation. We can deduce two important lessons from this: First, our values will often depend upon where we fall in this pattern and how our generation reacts against the particular imbalances of the previous generation. We would simply not be the same person we are now, with the same attitude and ideals, if we had emerged during the 1920s or the 1950s instead of later periods. We are not aware of this critical influence because it is too close to us to observe. Certainly we bring our own individual spirit into play in this drama, and to the degree that we can cultivate our uniqueness, we will gain power and the ability to direct the zeitgeist. But it is critical that we recognize first the dominant role that our generation plays in our formation, and where this generation falls in the pattern. Second, we notice that generations seem capable only of reacting and moving in an opposing direction to the previous generation. Perhaps this is because a generational perspective is formed in

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  She shocked the locals by swimming in the ocean. Women did not do such things, and swimming costumes for women were almost nonexistent, so she created her own out of the same jersey fabric. Within weeks women were at her store clamoring to buy them. She sauntered through Deauville wearing her own distinctive outfits— androgynous, easy to move in, and ever so slightly provocative as they hugged the body. She became the talk of the town. Women were desperate to find out where she got her wardrobe. She kept improvising with men’s clothing to create new looks. She took one of Capel’s sweaters and cut it open, added some buttons, and created a modern version of the cardigan, for women. This now became the rage. She cut her own hair to a short length, knowing how it suited her face, and suddenly this became the new trend. Sensing momentum, she gave her clothes without charge to beautiful and well-connected women, all sporting hairstyles similar to her own. Attending the most sought-after parties, these women, all looking like Chanel clones, spread the desire for this new style well beyond Deauville, to Paris itself. By 1920 she had become one of the leading fashion designers in the world, and the greatest trendsetter of her time. Her clothes had come to represent a new kind of woman—confident, provocative, and ever so slightly rebellious. Although they were cheap to make and still out of jersey material, she sold some of her dresses at extremely high prices, and wealthy women were more than willing to pay to share in the Chanel mystique. But quickly her old restlessness returned. She wanted something else, something larger, a faster way to reach women of all classes. To realize this dream she decided upon a most unusual strategy—she would create and launch her own perfume. At the time it was unusual for a fashion house to market its own perfume, and unheard of to give it so much emphasis. But Chanel had a plan. This perfume would be as distinctive as her clothes yet more ethereal, literally something in the air that would excite men and women and infect them with the desire to possess it. To accomplish this she would go in the opposite direction from all the other perfumes out there, which were associated with some natural, floral scent. Instead, she wanted to create something that was not identifiable as a particular flower. She wanted it to smell like “a bouquet of abstract flowers,” something pleasant but completely novel. More than any other perfume, it would smell different on each woman. To take this further, she decided to give it a most unusual name. Perfumes of the time had very poetic, romantic titles. Instead, she would name it after herself, attaching a simple number, Chanel No. 5, as if it were a scientific concoction. She packaged the perfume in a sleek modernist bottle and added to the label her new

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Stone Butch Blues TH1 didn’t want to see again. I thought about the time my parents caught me dressed in my father’s clothes. Warm memories flooded over me: butch friends, drag queen confidants, femme lovers. I couldn’t find them now. I was alone at this crossroads. I couldn’t bring myself to sink the needle into my thigh. Then I pictured my Norton, all smashed to smithereens in the pizzeria parking lot. I stabbed my thigh with the needle and injected the hormone. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I felt a wave of excitement—the possibility that something was going to change, that an enormous weight might be lifted from me. Maybe now I could finally be myself and just live. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the tile wall. After a while I stood up and put my chinos back on. I looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Still me, looking back at me. Nothing happened for the first two months. My voice hadn’t deepened. I knew that for a fact because every day I called telephone information and the operators still called me ma’am. The only changes I could notice were not what I’d hoped for. My skin broke out. My 178 = Leslie Feinberg body plumpened. My moods swung. Whatever was going to emerge wasn’t here yet, but it was coming. I'd have to say goodbye to Kim and Scotty soon. Gloria would never let me see the kids once I started to change. On a wintry Saturday I arranged to take them to the zoo. It was snowing so hard that the bus ride to Gloria’s house seemed to take forever. “T’m going away,” I told Gloria. “You want more coffee?” she asked. I covered my cup with one hand and shook my head. Gloria sat down next to me. “You tell the kids yet?” I shook my head. “Those kids think the sun rises and sets with you—I don’t get it.” Her words wounded me. “I’m loveable, Gloria, what can I tell your” She shook her head. “Be careful when you tell them, OK? They’re still shook up about their father and me.” I nodded. Scotty and Kim practically knocked each other overt running into the kitchen to greet me. They were both so bundled up I could only see their eyes between their hats and their scarves. Gloria tossed me the keys to her car. She looked upset. “Be careful, driving in the snow.” I didn’t think that’s what she was concerned about. “Don’t worry about us,” I told her. By the time we got to the zoo the snow was deep and fat flakes continued to fall. There weren’t many people out, just a few parents with their kids. “Let’s make snow angels,’ Kim suggested. “Not yet,’ I told her. “Let’s not get wet till we’re ready to leave.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In this new form of a group, it is always wise to introduce some rituals that bond the members together and some symbols to identify with. We see many examples of this in the past—the salons of seventeenth-century France, where men and women could talk freely and openly; the lodges of the Freemasons in eighteenth- century Europe, with their secret rituals and air of subversion; the speakeasies and jazz clubs of the 1920s, where the mood was “anything goes”; or more recently, online platforms and groups, or flash mobs. In using this strategy, think of the repressive elements of the past that people are yearning to shake free of. This could be a period of stultifying correctness or prudery, or rampant conformity, or the overvaluing of individualism and all the selfishness that breeds. The group you establish will let flourish a new spirit and even offer the thrill of breaking past taboos on correctness. Subvert the spirit. You might find yourself at odds with some part of the spirit of your generation or the times you live in. Perhaps you identify with some tradition in the past that has been superseded, or your values differ in some way because of your own individual temperament. Whatever the reason, it is never wise to preach or moralize or condemn the spirit of the times. You will only marginalize yourself. If the spirit of the times is like a tide or a stream, better to find a way to gently redirect it, instead of fighting its direction. You will have more power and effect by working within the zeitgeist and subverting it. For instance, you make something—a book, a film, any product— that has the look and feel of the times, even to an exaggerated degree. However, through the content of what you produce, you insert ideas and a spirit that is somewhat different, that points to the value of the past you prefer or depicts another possible way of relating to events or interpreting them, helping to loosen up the tight generational framework through which people view their world. After World War II, the great European fashion designers felt a great deal of disdain for the American market that now dominated the world. They disliked the emerging popular culture and its vulgarity. The fashion designer Coco Chanel had always emphasized elegance in her designs and certainly shared some of this antipathy. But she went in the opposite direction of other designers of the time: she embraced the new power of American women and catered to their desire for clothing that was less fussy and more athletic. Gaining their trust and using their language, Chanel now had great power to subtly alter American tastes, bringing in more of her true sensibility and imparting some elegance to the streamlined designs American women loved. In this way she helped redirect the zeitgeist in fashion, anticipating the changes of the early 1960s.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  IT WAS ALMOST A YEAR before I got up the nerve to call telephone information for the address of Tifka’s. Finally I stood on the street in front of the bar, scared to death. I wondered what made me think this was the place I could fit. And what if I didn’t? I wore my blue-and-red striped shirt, a navy blue jacket to hide my breasts, black pressed chinos, and black Keds high-tops, because I had no dress shoes. When I stepped inside, it was just a bar. Through the haze of smoke I saw faces glance over and look me up and down. There was no turning back, and I didn’t want to. For the first time I might have found my people. I just didn’t know how to penetrate this society. I bellied up to the bar and ordered a Genny. “How old are you?” the bartender asked. “Old enough,” I countered and put my money down. A round of smirks rolled around the bar. I sipped the beer and tried to act cool. An older drag queen studied me carefully. I picked up my beer and walked toward the smoke-filled backroom. What I saw there released tears I’d held back for years: strong, burly women, wearing ties and suit coats. Their hair was slicked back in perfect DAs. They were the handsomest women Id ever seen. Some of them were wrapped in slow motion dances with women in tight dresses and high heels who touched them tenderly. Just watching made me ache with need. This was everything I could have hoped for in life. “You ever been in a bar like this before?” the drag queen asked me. “Lots of times,” I answered quickly. She smiled. Then I wanted to ask her something so badly I forgot to keep up my lie. “Can I really buy a woman a drink or ask her to dance?” “Sure, honey,’ she said, “but only the femmes.” She laughed and told me her name was Mona. I focused on a woman sitting at a table alone. God, she was beautiful. I wanted to dance with her. The Four Tops were singing, Baby, I need your loving. 1 wasn’t sure I knew how to slow dance, but I made a beeline for her before I lost my nerve. “Would you dance with me?” I asked. Mona and the bouncer picked me up and practically carried me into the front bar and set me on a stool. Mona put her hand on my shoulder and looked me dead in the eyes. “Kid, there’s a few things I should tell you. It’s my fault. I told you it was OK to ask a woman to dance. But the first thing you should know is—don’t ask Butch Al’s woman!”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  racked his brain for a way to outdo the French, he finally hit upon a scheme in October of 1719 that was worthy of his motto and that he felt certain would change the course of history. The greatest problem facing the English government, headed by the king, was the massive debts it had incurred over the course of thirty years during the wars that had been fought with France and Spain, all financed through borrowing. Blunt’s proposal was simple and quite astounding: The South Sea Company would pay the government a nice fee in order to completely take over the debt, valued at a whopping £31 million. (The company would receive in exchange an annual interest payment on the debt.) The company would then privatize this £31 million debt and sell it as if it were a commodity, as shares in the South Sea Company—one share equaling £100 of debt. Those who had lent the government money could convert their IOUs into equivalent shares in the South Sea Company. The shares that were left over would be sold to the public. The price for one share would start at £100. As with any stock, the price could rise and fall, but in this case, if played right, the price would only go up. The South Sea Company had an intriguing name and held out the possibility that it would also begin trading in the vast wealth in South America. It was also the patriotic duty of English creditors to participate in the scheme, since they would be helping to cancel the debt while potentially making much more money than the annual interest payments the government paid them. If the share price rose, as it almost certainly would, buyers could cash out for a profit and the company could afford to pay nice dividends. Like magic, debt could be transformed into wealth. This would be the answer to all of the government’s problems, and it would assure Blunt lasting fame. When King George first heard of Blunt’s proposal in November of 1719, he was quite confused. He could not understand how such a negative (debt) could be instantly turned into a positive. Besides, this new jargon of finance went straight over his head. But Blunt spoke with such conviction that he found himself swept up in his enthusiasm. After all, he was promising to solve George’s two greatest problems in one fell swoop, and it was hard to resist such a prospect. King George was massively unpopular, one of the most unpopular English kings of all time. It was not totally his fault: he was not English by birth but German. His title previously had been the Duke of Brunswick and Elector of Hanover. When Queen Anne of England died in 1714, George was her closest living Protestant relative. But the moment he ascended the throne his new subjects found him not to their liking. He spoke English with a horrific accent, and his

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  dreamwold (1972) I get drunk for the first time when I’m twelve, at a place called Dreamwold. This baptism in beer takes place outdoors, in daylight, at an Octoberfest. My preteen friends and I find unattended pitchers and we empty them. Then we find more. Dreamwold is the fantasy village built by Scituate’s most famous son, a man named Lawson, the “Copper King,” a turn-of-the-century robber baron, long dead, the estate broken up into private homes and institutions. I went to kindergarten in one of Dreamwold’s outbuildings. There still exists somewhere a photograph of me walking through Dreamwold with a book on my head for a class in “posture.” That December, just before Christmas, Travis tells me to go out and warm up the truck. It’s midnight, a school night. We drive down to the Harbor, coast to a stop beside the chain-link fence around St. Mary’s field, kill the headlights. Town’s asleep, snow falls. A dim light shines from within the trailer guarding the trees the Knights of Columbus sell. Travis tells me to wait, vaults the fence, leaves black footprints straight to the trees. A car slows, passes. Within minutes he’s bounding back, dragging two perfect spruces behind. He tosses them over the fence, I wrestle one into the back of the truck while he one-arms the other. Twenty bucks is too much for a tree , he mutters, then laughs as we pull away. As a kid we’d go into the woods with an ax, he snorts, take whatever we wanted. He cracks open a beer, and for the first time offers me one.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Look at the role that luck may have played, or the help you received from others. Resist falling for the success delusion. As you now focus on the next idea, see yourself back at square one. Each new project represents a new challenge and a fresh approach. You might very well fail. You need the same level of focus as you had on the last project. Never rest on your laurels or let up in your intensity. Seek out calibrated challenges. The problem with fantastical grandiosity is that you imagine some great new goal you will achieve —that brilliant novel you will write, that lucrative start-up you will create. The challenge is so great that you may start, but you will soon peter out as you realize you are not up to it. Or if you are the ambitious, assertive type, you might try to go all the way, but you will end up in the Euro Disney syndrome, overwhelmed, failing in a large fashion, blaming others for the fiasco, and never learning from the experience. Your goal with practical grandiosity is to continually look for challenges just above your skill level. If the projects you attempt are below or at your skill level, you will become easily bored and less focused. If they are too ambitious, you will feel crushed by your failure. However, if they are calibrated to be more challenging than the last project, but to a moderate degree, you will find yourself excited and energized. You must be up to this challenge so your focus levels will rise as well. This is the optimum path toward learning. If you fail, you will not feel overwhelmed and you will learn even more. If you succeed, your confidence increases, but it is tied to your work and to having met the challenge. Your sense of accomplishment will satisfy your need for greatness. Let loose your grandiose energy. Once you have tamed this energy, made it serve your ambitions and goals, you should feel safe to let it loose upon occasion. Think of it as a wild animal that needs to roam free now and then or it will go mad from restlessness. What this means is that you occasionally allow yourself to entertain ideas or projects that represent greater challenges than you have considered in the past. You feel increasingly confident and you want to test yourself. Consider developing a new skill in an unrelated field, or writing that novel you once considered a distraction from the real work. Or simply give freer rein to your imagination when in the planning process. If you are in the public eye and must perform before others, let go of the restraint you have developed and let your grandiose energy fill you with high levels of self-belief.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He was unusually large for his age, with an enormous head and a rather monstrous face. Growing up on the family farm, he had twice been attacked by bulls, their horns splitting his upper lip and cracking his nose. Some people found him frightening, but many were charmed by his youthful exuberance and could ignore the face. The boy was simply fearless, always in search of adventure, and it was his bold spirit that attracted people to him, particularly among his classmates. At the school he was attending, the liberal priests who ran it had decided to award a prize to the student who wrote an essay that best described the upcoming coronation, its necessity and meaning at a time when France was trying to modernize itself. Danton was not the intellectual type. He preferred swimming in the nearby river and any other kind of physical activity. The one subject that excited him was history, particularly ancient Rome. His favorite historical figure was the great Roman lawyer and orator Cicero. He identified with Cicero, who also came from the middle class. He memorized Cicero’s speeches and developed a love for oratory. With his powerful speaking voice, he was a natural at the art. But he was not very good at writing. He desperately wanted to win the essay prize—it would instantly elevate him among the ranks of fellow students. He had reasoned, however, that the only way he could compensate for his less-than- stellar literary skills was to witness the coronation firsthand and give a vivid description of it. He also felt a strange affinity with the young king: they were not far apart in age, and both were large and considered decidedly unhandsome. Playing hooky to get to Reims, only eighty miles away, was just the kind of adventure that had always attracted him. He had told his friends, “I want to see how a king is made.” And so he had snuck off to Reims the day before the coronation and had arrived just in time. He moved through the throng of French people congregating outside the cathedral. Guards brandishing tall pikes held them back. Only the nobility was allowed inside. Danton pushed as far forward as he could, and then he spotted the king, wearing the most spectacular ceremonial robe encrusted with diamonds and gold, making his way up the steps. There was the pretty queen following him in a splendid gown, her hair piled impossibly high, followed by other members of her entourage.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  You must appear natural and attentive, using only quick peripheral glances to notice any changes in the face, voice, or body. In observing any particular individual over time, you need to establish their baseline expression and mood. Some people are naturally quiet and reserved, their facial expression revealing this. Some are more animated and energetic, while still others continually wear an anxious look. Aware of a person’s usual demeanor, you can pay greater attention to any deviations—for instance, sudden animation in someone who is generally reserved, or a relaxed look from the habitually nervous. Once you know a person’s baseline, it will be much easier to see signs of dissimulation or distress in them. The ancient Roman Mark Antony was naturally a jovial person, always smiling, laughing, and poking fun at people. It was when he suddenly turned silent and sullen in their meetings after the assassination of Julius Caesar that Antony’s rival Octavius (later Augustus) understood that Antony was up to something and had hostile intentions. Related to the baseline expression, try to observe the same person in different settings, noticing how their nonverbal cues change if they are talking to a spouse, a boss, an employee. For another exercise, observe people who are about to do something exciting—a trip to some alluring place, a date with someone they’ve been pursuing, or any event for which they have high expectations. Note the looks of anticipation, how the eyes open wider and stay there, the face flushed and generally animated, a slight smile on the lips as they think of what’s about to come. Contrast this with the tension exhibited by a person about to take a test or go on a job interview. You are increasing your vocabulary when it comes to correlating emotions and facial expressions. Pay great attention to any mixed signals you pick up: a person professes to love your idea, but their face shows tension and their tone of voice is strained; or they congratulate you on your promotion, but the smile is forced and the expression seems sad. Such mixed signals are very common. They can also involve different parts of the body. In the novel The Ambassadors by Henry James, the narrator notices that a woman who has visited him smiles at him during most of the conversation but holds her parasol with a great deal of tension. Only by noticing this can he sense her real mood— discomfort. With mixed signals, you need to be aware that a greater part of nonverbal communication involves the leakage of negative emotions, and you need to give greater weight to the negative cue as indicative of the person’s true feelings. At some point, you can then ask yourself why they might feel sadness or antipathy.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  richness of life at the cost of our creative powers, our sense of fulfillment, our social pleasures, and our vital energies. Without wasting another day under such conditions, your goal is to break out, to expand what you see and what you experience. You want to open the aperture of the lens as wide as you can. Here is your road map. How to view the world: See yourself as an explorer. With the gift of consciousness, you stand before a vast and unknown universe that we humans have just begun to investigate. Most people prefer to cling to certain ideas and principles, many of them adopted early on in life. They are secretly afraid of what is unfamiliar and uncertain. They replace curiosity with conviction. By the time they are thirty, they act as if they know everything they need to know. As an explorer you leave all that certainty behind you. You are in continual search of new ideas and new ways of thinking. You see no limits to where your mind can roam, and you are not concerned with suddenly appearing inconsistent or developing ideas that directly contradict what you believed a few months before. Ideas are things to play with. If you hold on to them for too long, they become something dead. You are returning to your childlike spirit and curiosity, from before you had an ego and being right was more important than connecting to the world. You explore all forms of knowledge, from all cultures and time periods. You want to be challenged. By opening the mind in this way, you will unleash unrealized creative powers, and you will give yourself great mental pleasure. As part of this, be open to exploring the insights that come from your own unconscious, as revealed in your dreams, in moments of tiredness, and in the repressed desires that leak out in certain moments. You have nothing to be afraid of or to repress there. The unconscious is merely one more realm for you to freely explore. How to view adversity: Our life inevitably involves obstacles, frustrations, pain, and separations. How we come to handle such moments in our early years plays a large role in the development of our overall attitude toward life. For many people, such difficult moments inspire them to restrict what they see and experience. They go through life trying to avoid any kind of adversity, even if this means never really challenging themselves or getting much success in their careers. Instead of learning from negative experiences, they want to repress them. Your goal is to move in the opposite direction, to embrace all obstacles as learning experiences, as means to getting stronger. In this way you embrace life itself. By 1928 the actress Joan Crawford had a reasonably successful career in Hollywood, but she was feeling increasingly frustrated by the limited roles she was receiving. She saw other less talented actresses vault ahead of her. Perhaps the problem was that she was

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Sea Company. Blunt, it was reported, was a financial alchemist who had found the secret of transforming debt into wealth. In the countryside farmers pulled up from under their beds their life savings in coins and sent their sons and nephews to buy as many shares as possible. The fever spread to women of all classes, who normally did not dabble in such things. Now actresses were rubbing elbows with duchesses in Exchange Alley. All the while, the price kept rising, over £300 and soon £400. Like France before it, the country was now experiencing a spectacular boom. On May 28 the king celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and for someone who had been known for his frugality, it was the most lavish party anyone had ever seen, with enormous tubs full of claret and champagne. One woman at the party flaunted her new wealth by encrusting her dress with jewels worth over £5,000. Everywhere in London the wealthy were tearing down mansions and replacing them with houses that were even larger and grander. Porters and footmen were now quitting their jobs and buying expensive coaches and hiring porters and footmen of their own. One young actress made such a fortune, she decided to retire; she rented out an entire theater to say good-bye to her adoring fans. An aristocratic lady was astonished one evening at the opera to see that her former maid now occupied a more expensive box in the theater than her own. Jonathan Swift wrote in a letter to a friend, “I have enquired of some that have come from London, what is the religion there? They tell me it is South Sea stock. What is the policy of England? The answer is the same. What is the trade? South Sea still. And what is the business? Nothing but South Sea.” In this midst of this feverish buying and selling spree, there stood John Blunt at the pump, doing whatever he possibly could to stimulate the interest in South Sea shares and keep the price rising. He sold the stock in various subscriptions, offering generous terms of payment, sometimes requiring only a 20 percent advance to get in. For every £400 invested, Blunt would lend £300. He wanted to keep up the demand and make people feel that they might be missing out on their one chance for wealth. Soon the price had passed £500 and kept on rising. By June 15, he had set the subscription price at an astronomical £1,000, with only 10 percent down to get in and 10 percent installments spread out over four years. Few could resist such terms. That very month King George had Blunt knighted. Now a baronet, Sir John Blunt stood at the pinnacle of English society. Yes, he was rather unattractive to look at and he could be quite pompous. But he had made so many people so wealthy that he was now England’s most cherished celebrity. As the rich and powerful prepared to leave London for the

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  And so, as he racked his brain for a way to outdo the French, he finally hit upon a scheme in October of 1719 that was worthy of his motto and that he felt certain would change the course of history. The greatest problem facing the English government, headed by the king, was the massive debts it had incurred over the course of thirty years during the wars that had been fought with France and Spain, all financed through borrowing. Blunt’s proposal was simple and quite astounding: The South Sea Company would pay the government a nice fee in order to completely take over the debt, valued at a whopping £31 million. (The company would receive in exchange an annual interest payment on the debt.) The company would then privatize this £31 million debt and sell it as if it were a commodity, as shares in the South Sea Company—one share equaling £100 of debt. Those who had lent the government money could convert their IOUs into equivalent shares in the South Sea Company. The shares that were left over would be sold to the public. The price for one share would start at £100. As with any stock, the price could rise and fall, but in this case, if played right, the price would only go up. The South Sea Company had an intriguing name and held out the possibility that it would also begin trading in the vast wealth in South America. It was also the patriotic duty of English creditors to participate in the scheme, since they would be helping to cancel the debt while potentially making much more money than the annual interest payments the government paid them. If the share price rose, as it almost certainly would, buyers could cash out for a profit and the company could afford to pay nice dividends. Like magic, debt could be transformed into wealth. This would be the answer to all of the government’s problems, and it would assure Blunt lasting fame. When King George first heard of Blunt’s proposal in November of 1719, he was quite confused. He could not understand how such a negative (debt) could be instantly turned into a positive. Besides, this new jargon of finance went straight over his head. But Blunt spoke with such conviction that he found himself swept up in his enthusiasm. After all, he was promising to solve George’s two greatest problems in one fell swoop, and it was hard to resist such a prospect. King George was massively unpopular, one of the most unpopular English kings of all time. It was not totally his fault: he was not English by birth but German.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  What Jon and his colleagues had demonstrated with these experiments was that the brain possesses its own pain mediating system. The analgesic effect of these endogenous endorphins can be just as powerful as the strongest known opioid drugs like morphine! What occurred to me at Esalen was the possibility that I had witnessed the effects of opiate withdrawal during our Monday sessions. This was in stark contrast to Thursdays, when the previous night’s opiate orgy, stimulated by the hyperventilating catharsis, produced a “stoned,” spaced-out group of participants. These Thursday groups were populated by community members who had recently gotten their drug fix on Wednesday and did not crave another one. In particular, I wondered if the intense emotional abreactions I observed on Mondays were a method by which participants released their own internal opiates (endorphins), essentially giving themselves a fix, not unlike a shot of morphine. Excited about my hypothesis, I telephoned my brother. Since it was not yet known that the brain regions and neural pathways responsible for physical and emotional pain were nearly identical, Jon’s response was not encouraging. “Peter,” he said, pitying my naïveté, “don’t be silly,” while managing to get in a well-deserved jab at his older sibling—a rivalry reasserted. However, a few years later, Bessel van der Kolk replicated Jon’s experiment. 165 This time the focus was on Naloxone’s blocking the endorphins released by emotional, rather than physical, pain. He studied a common treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) administered, at that time, to Vietnam vets in the nation’s VA hospitals. These unfortunate soldiers were repeatedly provoked into “reliving” their horrific battlefield experiences. In this “therapy,” they were forced, for example, to watch gory war movies like Platoon with their arms tied to a chair. These exposures frequently catapulted the veterans into intense emotional abreactions. However, when Naloxone was administered before these cathartic sessions (depriving them of their self-induced endorphin rush) they soon lost interest in taking part in further “therapeutic” sessions. As I observed many workshop attendees over the years (returning time and time again), I couldn’t help but wonder if they were also inducing their own chemical highs.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  To convey the nature and transmutation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche, I have also drawn upon selected findings in the neurosciences. It is my conviction that clinical, naturalistic animal studies and comparative brain research can together greatly contribute to the evolution of methodologies that help restore resilience and promote self-healing. Toward this end, I will explain how our nervous system has evolved a hierarchical structure, how these hierarchies interact, and how the more advanced systems shut down in the face of overwhelming threat, leaving brain, body and psyche to their more archaic functions. I hope to demonstrate how successful therapy restores these systems to their balanced operation. An unexpected side effect of this approach is what might be called “Awakening the Living, Knowing Body.” I will discuss how this awakening describes, in essence, what happens when animal instinct and reason are brought together, giving us the opportunity to become more whole human beings. I aim to speak to the therapists who seek a better understanding of the roots of trauma in brain and body—such as psychological, psychiatric, physical, occupational and “bodywork” therapists. I also hope to reach the many medical doctors who are confounded by patients presenting inexplicable and mutable symptoms, the nurses who have long worked on the frontlines caring for terrified, injured patients and the policy makers concerned with our nation’s problematic healthcare. Finally, I look for the larger audience of voracious readers of a wide variety of subjects—ranging from adventure, anthropology, biology, Darwin, neuroscience, quantum physics, string theory, relativity and zoology to the “Science” section of the New York Times. Inspired by a childhood of reading Sherlock Holmes, I have attempted to engage the reader in the excitement of a lifelong journey of mystery and discovery. This voyage has carried me into a field that is at the core of what it means to be a human being, existing on an unpredictable and oftentimes violent planet. I have been privileged to study how people can rebound after extreme challenges and have borne witness to the resilience of the human spirit, to the lives of countless people who have returned to happiness and goodness, even after great devastation. I will be telling some of this story in a way that is personal. The writing of this book has presented me with a very exciting challenge. I offer an account of my own experience as a clinician, scientist and inner explorer. My hope is that the occasional use of storytelling will help to create an accessible work that engages the clinical and scientific, but is sparse on jargon and is not unduly tedious and pedantic. I will utilize case vignettes to illustrate various principles, as well as invite the reader to participate in selected awareness exercises that embody these principles.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A scene from an upland meadow helps to illustrate the differentiation of feelings and emotions. While you are strolling leisurely in an open meadow, a shadow suddenly moves in the periphery of your vision. Instinctively, all of your movement is arrested (with the feeling of a startle); reflexively you crouch in a somewhat flexed posture. After this momentary “arrest response,” your head automatically turns in the direction of the shadow or sound. You attempt to localize and identify the source. Your neck, back, legs and feet muscles all coordinate so that your whole body turns and then extends. Your eyes narrow, while your pelvis and head shift horizontally, giving you an optimal view of the surroundings and an ability to focus panoramically. This initial two-phase action pattern is an instinctive orientation preparing you to respond flexibly to many possible contingencies; it generates the feeling tone of “expectant curiosity.” The initial arrest-crouch flexion response minimizes detection by possible predators and possibly offers some protection from falling objects. Primarily, though, it provides a convulsive jerk that interrupts any motor patterns already in motion. Then, through scanning, it flexibly prepares you for the fine-tuned behaviors of exploration (for sources of food, shelter and mating) or for defense against predation (experienced as danger and not fear). If it had been an eagle taking flight that cast the shadow, a further orientation of tracking-pursuit would likely occur. Adjustments of postural and facial muscles coordinate unconsciously. The new “attitude of interest,” when integrated with the contour of the rising eagle image, is perceived as the feeling of excitement. This aesthetically pleasing sense, recognized as the feeling of enjoyment, is affected by past experience. It may also, however, be one of the many powerful archetypal predispositions or undercurrents that each species has developed over millennia of evolutionary time. Most Native Americans, for example, have a very special, spiritual, mythic relationship with the eagle. Is this a coincidence, or is there something imprinted deeply within the structures of the brain, body and soul of the human species that responds intrinsically to the image of eagle with a correlative excitement and awe? Most organisms possess dispositions, if not specific approach/avoidance responses, to large moving contours.*

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  LECTURE 15 THE FIRST GREAT AWAKENING A revival is a form of what scholars sometimes call religious enthusiasm, that is, a subjective experience that makes your body respond and defies the rules of reason and logic. Almost all religious communities have some kind of ritual or gathering in which members express enthusiasm. In Christianity, the first revival was at Pentecost, which was recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 2. According to the account in Acts, Christ’s apostles were seated together and, in a rush of wind and fire, the Holy Spirit descended on the group and gave them the power to speak in tongues. 141 Christian revivals are as old as Christianity itself. But they became an especially influential and common cultural form in Protestantism, after the Reformation. This lecture focuses on the grandfather of all modern revivals, the First Great Awakening. PRELUDE TO REVIVAL õ The First Great Awakening spanned the middle of the 18th century, but its prelude begins earlier. The Puritans of Scotland held revivals starting in the 17th century that they called long communions. They were basically rowdy, outdoor communion ceremonies that could last several days. õ One of the great early Scottish revivals happened at the kirk of Shotts, near the city of Glasgow. In 1625, a fiery young Presbyterian preacher named John Livingston started traveling around this part of the country, preaching on the need for true conversion to Christ. He was also a vocal opponent of the office of the bishop, which was a controversial issue in Scotland at the time, and he had been formally banned from the parish of Shotts. õ But that didn’t stop him. In June of 1630 he came to Shotts to join a few other ministers in celebrating one of these long communions. They preached pretty much nonstop for four or five days, day and night, and thousands of people from all over southwest Scotland came to listen. Some people were so overcome by his words that they fainted and fell to the ground. õ That wasn’t the only branch: In 1707, reports started filtering out of children’s revivals in a part of Europe called Silesia, in what is now Poland and eastern Germany. Children proclaimed they felt God’s grace. In the early 18th century came bigger and bolder revivals, first in Europe, then moving along down the American coast and also up in the Canadian Maritimes. 142 The History of Christianity II THE CONVERSION OF GEORGE WHITEFIELD õ When scholars talk about the First Great Awakening, they are usually referring to a series of revivals that began in the 1720s and 1730s in New England, the mid-Atlantic colonies, and Britain, followed by revivals that spread south and north along the North American seaboard, the last of which happened in the 1780s. Lecture 15—The First Great Awakening 143

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In pursuing the arcane allusion from my seminar, I came across a 1967 article titled “Comparative Aspects of Hypnosis.”6 I brought this article, along with my ideas about it, to my graduate research advisor, Donald M. Wilson.† His field was invertebrate neurophysiology, and he was familiar with these types of “freezing” behaviors. However, for one dedicated solely to the study of creatures like insects and lobsters, he was understandably skeptical about “animal hypnosis.” Nonetheless, I remained fascinated by the broadly observed phenomenon of animal paralysis and spent endless hours in the musty, dusty stacks of the Life Sciences graduate library. At the same time, I continued to see more clients referred primarily by Ed Jackson, the psychiatrist who had referred Nancy to me. I was exploring with them how various imbalanced patterns of muscular tension and postural tone were related to their symptoms—and how releasing and normalizing these entrenched patterns often led to unexpected and dramatic cures. Then in 1973, in the acceptance speech for his share in the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,‡ the ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen unexpectedly chose to talk not primarily about his study of animals in their natural environment, but about the observed human body as it goes through life and as it functions and malfunctions under stress. I was struck by his observations about the Alexander technique§ This body-based reeducation treatment, which he and members of his family had undergone with notable health benefits (including a normalizing of his high blood pressure), paralleled my observations with my body-mind clients. Clearly, I needed to talk to this elder. I managed to locate him at Oxford University; with unassuming generosity, this Nobel Laureate spoke to me, a lowly graduate student, via transatlantic cable on a number of occasions. I told him about my first session with Nancy and other clients, and about my speculation concerning the relationship of her reactions to “animal paralysis.” He was excited about the possibility that animal immobility reactions might play an important role in humans under conditions of inescapable threat and extreme stress, and encouraged me to pursue this line of investigation.‖ I occasionally wonder if without his support, as well as that from Hans Selye (the first stress researcher) and Raymond Dart (the anthropologist who discovered Australopithecus), I might have thrown in the towel.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Your ex-boyfriend gestures to a car on the street; a comically tiny convertible. You laugh, genuinely pleased. “You have a convertible?” It comes out weirdly; you say it again and again, changing inflections. “You have a convertible? You have a convertible?” You might be a little tipsy already. “Should I leave the roof down?” he asks. “Um, yes,” you say. He starts the engine and you drop the seat back and watch Berkeley and then Oakland this way the whole drive back, the tips of buildings at the circumference of your vision, a sky streaked with clouds with stars in the gaps between them. The car is going so fast that you feel wild, you feel like you could die right now and it would be thrilling. You realize you are laughing, and he goes even faster. [image file=image_rsrc2K1.jpg] In his apartment, you scratch his cat’s head hard with your fingernails. He makes you a drink. You sit down across from each other. “I’ve missed you,” he says. I’ve missed myself, you want to say, but you don’t. “I’ve missed you too,” you say. “I mean, I don’t miss men, but I did miss you. I’m glad we did this.” You straddle him and kiss him and later, when you are standing in the bathroom doing your best to wash semen out of your hair, he says something from the other side of the door. “What?” you ask, and open it. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “I mean, you’re gonna be okay.” You call him a weirdo and then return to the sink, dunking half your head under the faucet. When you look back in the mirror, you are smiling a little. You have breakfast with your friend; you tell her about the night before. You feel so good, you say. At peace, or something. The next day, her house burns to the ground. Your friend is fine, but one of her roommate’s houseguests is killed in the blaze. You are thinking about fire inspectors examining your hot bones among the cinders as you drive out of town and south through the Central Valley. The air is dry and the traffic terrible, but you can see orchards for miles. The light is gold. Dream House as Plot TwistYou spend the rest of your time in San Diego writing, drinking scotch, taking long walks down to the beach with your classmates, and pulling massive bullwhips of kelp out of the ocean. You and Val talk every other day. One day, she asks if she can accompany you on your way back to Iowa, when you’re done.