Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  After all the group described, I saw two aged men, unlike in raiment, but like in bearing, and venerable and grave: one showed him to be of the familiars of that highest Hippocrates whom nature made for the creatures she holds most dear; the other showed the contrary care, with a sword glittering and sharp, such that on this side the stream it made me afeard.19 Then saw I four20 of lowly semblance; and behind all an old man solitary, coming in a trance, with visage keen.21 And these seven were arrayed as the first company; but of lilies around their heads no garland had they, Rather of roses and of other red flowers; one who viewed from short distance would have sworn that all were aflame above the eyes.22 And when the car was opposite to me, a thunder clap was heard; and those worthy folk seemed to have their further march forbidden, and halted there with the first ensigns.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  “Christ—it’s like ice,” he said. He ought to know the symptoms by now since he’s held my hand on lots of other flights. My fingers (and toes) turn to ice, my stomach leaps upward into my rib cage, the temperature in the tip of my nose drops to the same level as the temperature in my fingers, my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress—since I’m not wearing a bra), and for one screaming minute my heart and the engines correspond as we attempt to prove again that the laws of aerodynamics are not the flimsy superstitions which, in my heart of hearts, I know they are. Never mind the diabolical information to passengers, I happen to be convinced that only my own concentration (and that of my mother—who always seems to expect her children to die in a plane crash) keeps this bird aloft. I congratulate myself on every successful takeoff, but not too enthusiastically because it’s also part of my personal religion that the minute you grow overconfident and really relax about the flight, the plane crashes instantly. Constant vigilance, that’s my motto. A mood of cautious optimism should prevail. But actually my mood is better described as cautious pessimism. OK, I tell myself, we seem to be off the ground and into the clouds but the danger isn’t past. This is, in fact, the most perilous patch of air. Right here over Jamaica Bay where the plane banks and turns and the “No Smoking” sign goes off. This may well be where we go screaming down in thousands of flaming pieces. So I keep concentrating very hard, helping the pilot (a reassuringly midwestern voice named Donnelly) fly the 250-passenger motherfucker. Thank God for his crew cut and middle-America diction. New Yorker that I am, I would never trust a pilot with a New York accent.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Money, as usual, was a precipitating factor. After three months at Mount Sinai, the Blue Cross coverage ran out and Brian had to be transferred. Either he had to go to a state hospital (something which terrified us both) or to a private hospital (where fees were about $2,000 a month). We were up against a money-green wall. His parents stepped in then, not to help but to harass. If I’d let him go to California, they’d pay the cost of private treatment. Otherwise, not a penny. I lived with this ultimatum for a while and then finally decided I had no choice. In September we made the pilgrimage to California. We “lit out for the territory” not by covered wagon, but by 707, and we had my father and a shrink in tow. The airline would not fly Brian home without an attendant psychiatrist—which also meant that the four of us had to travel first class, munching macadamia nuts in between Libriums. It was a memorable flight. Brian was so agitated that I forgot my own fear of flying. My father was popping Libriums by the minute and admonishing me to be brave, and the shrink (a sweet-faced twenty-six-year-old resident who identified with us to the point of total incompetence) was jittery and needed my constant reassurance. Mother Isadora—I took care of all of them. All the gods, the daddies, who had failed. At the Linda Bella Clinic in La Jolla, the illusion of voluntarism was rigidly maintained. All the nurses wore Bermuda shorts, and the doctors wore sport shirts and corduroy pants and golfing hats. The patients were in similarly casual attire and wandered around in a setting which resembled a deluxe motel, complete with swimming pool and Ping-Pong tables. Everyone on the staff was determinedly cheerful and tried to pretend that Linda Bella was a kind of spa, rather than the place you went when nobody knew what to do with you at home anymore. The doctors advised against long parting scenes. Brian and I saw each other for the last time in the deserted O.T. room where he was viciously pounding a piece of clay into one of the tabletops. “You’re not part of me anymore,” he said. “You used to be part of me.” I was thinking how painful it was to be part of him, and how I had almost come to the point of forgetting who I was, but I couldn’t say that. “I’ll be back,” I said. “Why?” he snapped. “Because I love you.” “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have brought me here.” “That’s not true, Brian, the doctors said—” “You know the doctors don’t know anything about God. They’re not supposed to. But I thought you knew. You’re like all the rest. How many pieces of silver did you sell me for?” “I only want you to get better,” I said feebly. “Better than what? And if I were better, how would they know—sick as they are.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Also, in studies that measure facial EMG, there are as many studies that find sex differences as those that don’t (Barrett and Bliss-Moreau 2009b). [back] 19. the sex of the defendant: Kahan and Nussbaum 1996. [back] 20. are supposed to be aggressors: Tiedens 2001. they’re supposed to be afraid: This belief exists even though all mammals attack during threat; see heam.info/attack-1 . and perhaps even their jobs: Brescoll and Uhlmann 2008; Tiedens 2001. be really competent and powerful: Hillary Clinton is another example; see heam.info/clinton-1 . [back] 21. who kill their intimate partners: Percy et al. 2010; Miller 2010. [back] 22. passive, and helpless: Morrison 2006; Moore 1994. See also “Developments in the Law” 1993, citing court opinions that portray battered women as “helpless, passive or psychologically disturbed” (1592). [back] 23. of second-degree murder: Moore 1994. manslaughter, a lesser charge: African American women are in a catch-22; see heam.info/defense-1 . [back] 24. the rapist a heavier sentence: Schuster and Propen 2010, in Bandes, forthcoming. just having a bad day: Barrett and Bliss-Moreau 2009b. [back] 25. relief and happiness go unmentioned: Abrams and Keren 2009. people of the same sex: Calhoun 1999. [back] 26. in and out of court: For example, laws related to the “war on crime” put in place by Richard Nixon created a culture of fear against certain ethnic groups in the United States (Simon 2007). the target of inconsistent rulings: Abrams and Keren 2009, 2032. [back] 27. and her crime was possible: Feresin 2011. [back] 28. findings in their defense strategy: For a review, see Edersheim et al. 2012. [back] 29. neurons in the human brain: Graziano 2016. [back] 30. to pain to math skills: As shown by a meta-analysis of almost six thousand brain-imaging experiments; see heam.info/meta-1 . and impulsivity in some instances: This is called the “reverse inference problem”; see heam.info/rev-1 . [back] 31. aggression, let alone murder: For more on brain region size and free will, see heam.info/size-1 . and cause severe personality changes: Burns and Swerdlow 2003; Mobbs et al. 2007. [back] 32. automatically releases someone from responsibility: The same argument could serve as a reason to keep Albertani locked up; see heam.info/albertani-1 . [back] 33. “he has no regrets”: McKelvey 2015. “he is devoid of”: Stevenson 2015. [back] 34. sex, or ethnicity: Haney 2005, 189–209; Lynch and Haney 2011. See also heam.info/empathy-1 . So much for the idea of being judged by a jury of your peers (which is enshrined in the Magna Carta and the U.S. Bill of Rights). [back] 35. the “Chechen wolf”: Wikipedia, s.v. “Chechen Wolf,” last modified March 18, 2015, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_wolf . [back] 36. painful to shame your family: Nisbett and Cohen 1996. [back] 37. leading to his death sentence: Imagine if a defendant in a murder case smiled through the proceedings; see heam.info/trial-1 . [back] 38. as evidence from the trial: Keefe 2015.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  She feels the convulsions of the orgasm suck violently around her fingers. Her hand falls to her side and then she sinks into a dead sleep. She dreams she is back in the apartment where she grew up, but this time it was planned by a dream architect. The halls leading to three-walled bedrooms meander like ancient riverbeds and the kitchen pantry is a wind tunnel hung with cabinets too high to reach. The pipes fret like old men gargling; the floorboards breathe. In her bedroom, the frosted doorway glass is full of faces crying their anguish to the moon with O-shaped mouths. A long syllable of moonlight slides forward silvering the floor, then shatters with the sound of breaking glass. The faces in the door are wolfish. Blood stiffens in the corners of their mouths. The maid’s bathroom has a claw-footed tub where a child can imagine herself drowning. Four brass lanterns hang from the living-room ceiling. It is fathoms high and covered with tarnished gold leaf. Above the living room is a balcony with turned railing posts just wide enough apart for a child to ease through and begin floating through the air. One flight farther up and she is in the studio which smells of turpentine. The ceiling points up like a witch’s hat. A spiked iron chandelier hangs dead center from a black chain. It swings slightly in the wind which hisses between the trapezoidal northern window and the trapezoidal southern window. Beethoven’s plaster death mask hangs on the wall. His domed lids are shut. She climbs up on a chair and runs her fingers across them. The black soot streaks the plaster. Now she has left her fingerprints on Beethoven’s eyes. Something dreadful will surely happen. On the table is a skull. Beside it is a candlestick. This is a still life her grandfather has set up. Are there such things as still lives? On the easel is a half-finished painting of the skull and candlestick. Which is more still? The skull? Or the still life of the skull? Which stillness will last longer? In the corner of the room is a closet. Her husband’s green army jacket hangs there, empty. The sleeves flap in the wind. Is he dead? She is terribly frightened. She runs through the studio trapdoor and down the steps. Suddenly she falls, knowing she is going to die when she hits bottom. She struggles to scream and in the struggle wakes herself up. She is surprised to find herself in Paris rather than her parents’ house. He still lies beside her as if dead. She looks at his sleeping face, the long mouth with its curled-up corners, the sketchy eyebrows like Chinese calligraphy, and she thinks that next year this time they will not be together or else they will have a baby who does not look like her. “Merry Christmas,” he says, opening his eyes. They make love hopefully.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Was it really that simple? Did it all come down to what my mother had told me years ago about “playing hard to get"? It did seem to be true that the men who had loved me hardest were the ones I was most casual about. But what was the fun of that? What was the point? Couldn’t you ever bring philos and eros together, at least for a little while? What was the point of this constant round of alternating losses, this constant cycle of desire and indifference, indifference and desire? I had to find a hotel. It was late and dark and my suitcase was not only a great encumbrance, but it increased my air of availability. I had forgotten how awful it was to be a woman alone—the leering glances, the catcalls, the offers of help which you dared not accept for fear of incurring a sexual debt. The awful sense of vulnerability. No wonder I had gone from man to man and always wound up married. How could I have left Bennett? How could I have forgotten? I dragged my albatross of a suitcase around the corner into the Rue de la Harpe (shades of Charlie’s girlfriend Sally) and surprisingly found a room in the first hotel I tried. The prices had gone up steeply since the last time I’d been there and I was given the last remaining room on the very top floor (a painfully long climb with that suitcase). The place was a fire-trap, I remarked to myself with masochistic pleasure, and the top floor was where I was most likely to be trapped. All sorts of images rushed into my mind: Zelda Fitzgerald dying in that asylum fire (I had just read a biography of her): the seedy hotel room in the movie Breathless; my father warning me gravely before my first unescorted trip to Europe at nineteen that he had seen Breathless and knew what happened to American girls in Europe; Bennett and I fighting bitterly in Paris five Christmases ago; Pia and I staying in this same hotel when we were both twenty-three; my first trip to Paris at thirteen (a posh suite at the Georges V with my parents and sisters, and all of us brushing our teeth with Perrier); my grandfather’s stories about living on bananas in Paris as a penniless art student; my mother dancing naked in the Bois de Boulogne (she said).... I had been temporarily cheered by my luck in finding a place, but when I actually saw the room and realized I’d have to spend the night alone there, my heart sank. It was really half a room with a plywood partition across it (God knows what was on the other side) and a sagging single bed covered by a very dusty chintz spread.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  There is no power game. The man is not “taking” and the woman is not “giving.” No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. Whenever it seemed I was close, I discovered a horse with a papier-mâché horn, or two clowns in a unicorn suit. Alessandro, my Florentine friend, came close. But he was, after all, one clown in a unicorn suit. Consider this tapestry, my life. THREE Knock, Knock Sex, as I said, can be summed up in three P’s: procreation, pleasure, and pride. From the long-range point of view, which we must always consider, procreation is by far the most important, since without procreation there could be no continuation of the race…. So female orgasm is simply a nervous climax to sex relations…and as such it is a comparative luxury from nature’s point of view. It may be thought of as a sort of pleasure-prize like a prize that comes with a box of cereal. It is all to the good if the prize is there, but the cereal is valuable and nourishing if it is not. —Madeline Gray, The Normal Woman (sic), 1967 I n my dream Adrian and Bennett were going up and down on a seesaw in the playground in Central Park where I used to go as a child. “Maybe she ought to be analyzed in England,” Bennett was saying as his end of the seesaw swung up in the air. “I’ll turn her passport and shot record over to you.” Adrian had his feet on the ground now and he began shaking the seesaw like a big kid unloosed in the little kids’ playground. “Stop that!” I yelled. “You’re hurting him!” But Adrian kept grinning and shaking the seesaw. “Don’t you see you’re hurting him! Stop it!” I tried to scream, but, as always in dreams, my words became garbled. I was terrified that Adrian was going to bounce Bennett to the ground and break his back. “Please, please stop!” I pleaded. “What’s wrong?” Bennett mumbled. I had awakened him. I always talked in my sleep, and he always answered. “What happened?” “You were on a seesaw with someone. I got scared.” “Oh.” He rolled over. Normally Bennett would have put his arms around me, but we were in narrow beds on opposite sides of the room and instead he went back to sleep. I was wide awake now and could hear birds making a racket in the garden behind the hotel. At first they comforted me. Then I remembered that they were German birds and I got depressed.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] GLOOM OF HELL and of a night bereft of every planet under a meagre sky, darkened by cloud as much as it can be, made not to my sight so thick a veil, nor of a pile so harsh to the feel, as that smoke which there covered us; for it suffered not the eye to stay open: wherefore my wise and trusty Escort closed up to me, and offered me his shoulder. Even as a blind man goeth behind his guide in order not to stray, and not to butt against aught that may do him hurt, or perchance kill him, so went I through the bitter and foul air, listening to my Leader who was saying ever: “Look that thou be not cut off from me.” I heard voices, and each one seemed to pray for peace and for mercy, to the Lamb of God that taketh away sins. Only “Agnus Dei” were their beginnings:1 one word was with them all, and one measure; so that full concord seemed to be among them. “Are those spirits, Master, that I hear?” said I. And he to me: “Thou apprehendest truly, and they are untying the knot of anger.” “Now who art thou that cleavest our smoke, and speakest of us even as if thou didst still measure time by calends?”2 Thus by a voice was said; wherefore my Master said: “Answer thou and ask if by this way we go upward.” And I: “O creature that art cleansing thee to return fair unto him who made thee, a marvel shalt thou hear if thou follow me.” “I will follow thee so far as is permitted me,” it answered, “and if the smoke lets us not see, hearing shall keep us in touch in its stead.” Then began I: “With those swathings3 which death dissolves I am journeying upward and here did come through the anguish of Hell; and if God hath received me so far into his grace that he wills that I may behold his court in a manner quite outside modern use,4 hide not from me who thou wast before death, but tell it me and tell me if I am going aright for the pass; and thy words shall be our escort.” “A Lombard was I and was called Mark; I had knowledge of the world, and loved that worth at which now every one hath unbent his bow; for mounting up thou goest aright.” Thus answered he, and added: “I pray thee that thou pray for me, when thou art above.” And I to him: “By my faith I bind me to thee to do that which thou askest of me, but I am bursting within at a doubt, if I free me not from it. First ’twas simple, and now is made double by thy discourse, which makes certain to me, both here and elsewhere, that whereto I couple it.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  When we came to the honest mans house, he entertained and feasted my master exceedingly. And it fortuned while they eate and dranke together as signe of great amity there chanced a strange and dreadfull case: for there was a Hen which ran kackling about the yard, as though she would have layed an Egge. The good man of the house perceiving her, said: O good and profitable pullet that feedest us every day with thy fruit, thou seemest as though thou wouldest give us some pittance for our dinner: Ho boy put the Pannier in the corner that the Hen may lay. Then the boy did as his master commanded, but the Hen forsaking the Pannier, came toward her master and laid at his feet not an Egge, which every man knoweth, but a Chickin with feathers, clawes, and eyes, which incontinently ran peeping after his damme. By and by happened a more strange thing, which would cause any man to abhorre: under the Table where they sate, the ground opened, and there appeared a great well and fountain of bloud, insomuch that the drops thereof sparckled about the Table. At the same time while they wondred at this dreadfull sight one of the Servants came running out of the Seller, and told that all the wine was boyled out of the vessels, as though there had beene some great fire under. By and by a Weasel was scene that drew into the house a dead Serpent, and out of the mouth of a Shepheards dog leaped a live frog, and immediately after one brought word that a Ram had strangled the same dog at one bit. All these things that happened, astonied the good man of the house, and the residue that were present, insomuch that they could not tell what to doe, or with what sacrifice to appease the anger of the gods. While every man was thus stroken in feare, behold, one brought word to the good man of the house, that his three sonnes who had been brought up in good literature, and endued with good manners were dead, for they three had great acquaintance and ancient amity with a poore man which was their neighbour, and dwelled hard by them: and next unto him dwelled another young man very rich both in lands and goods, but bending from the race of his progenies dissentions, and ruling himselfe in the towne according to his owne will. This young royster did mortally hate this poore man, insomuch that he would kill his sheepe, steale his oxen, and spoyle his corne and other fruits before the time of ripenesse, yet was he not contented with this, but he would encroch upon the poore mans ground, and clayme all the heritage as his owne. The poore man which was very simple and fearefull, seeing all his goods taken away by the avarice of the rich man, called together and assembled many of his friends to shew them all his land, to the end he might have but so much ground of his fathers heritage, as might bury him. Amongst whom, he found these three brethren, as friends to helpe and ayd him in his adversity and tribulation.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The dining room was practically empty at every sitting and the room-service bells kept ringing. I see my pudgy thirteen-year-old self clutching my clutch bag full of Kotex on the dipping and weaving decks and bleeding my way all the way home to Manhattan. Ladies and Gentlemen, my menarche. A year and a half later, I was starving myself to death and my periods had stopped dead in their tracks. The cause? Fear of being a woman, as Dr. Schrift put it. Well, why not? OK. I was afraid of being a woman. Not afraid of the blood (I really looked forward to that—at least until I got yelled at for it), but afraid of all the nonsense that went along with it. Like being told that if I had babies, I’d never be an artist, like my mother’s bitterness, like my grandmother’s boring concentration on eating and excreting, like being asked by some dough-faced boy if I planned to be a secretary. A secretary! I was determined never to learn to type. (And I never have. In college Brian typed my papers. Later I pecked with two fingers or paid to have things typed. Oh, it has greatly inconvenienced me and it has cost me ridiculous sums of money—but what are money and inconvenience where principle is concerned? The principle of the thing was: I was not and never would be a typist. Even for myself, no matter how much that would have eased my life.) So, if menstruating meant you had to type, I would stop menstruating! And stop typing! Or both! And I wouldn’t have babies! I would cut off my nose to spite my face. I would literally throw out the baby with the bath water. And that, of course, was another reason I was in Paris. I had cut myself off from everything—family, friends, husband—just to prove I was free. Free as a misfired satellite in outer space. Free as a hijacker parachuting down into Death Valley. I swiped the remains of the roll of toilet paper, stuffed it into my bag, and started back toward my room. But which floor was it on anyway? My mind was blank. All the doors seemed identical. I ran up two flights and blindly headed for the corner door. I flung it open. A fat middle-aged man sat naked on a chair cutting his toenails. He looked up in mild surprise. “Excuse me!” I said and slammed the door in a hurry. I raced up another flight, found my own room and bolted the door. I couldn’t get over the expression on the man’s face. Amusement, but not shock. A tranquil Buddhalike smile. He was not alarmed at all. So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  dangerous bite of fiery Chimaera than for anything .else. For the very shepherds which drove us before them were well armed like warriors for battle: one had a spear, another had a hunting lance, some had darts, some clubs, some also gathered up great stones, of which there were many upon that rough road, some held up sharpened stakes, and most feared away the wolves with light firebrands: finally we lacked nothing to make up an army but only. trumpets. But when we had passed these dangers not, without small fear, though it was vain and empty, all was in vain, for we fortuned to fall into à snare much worse; for the wolves came not upon us, either because of the great noise and multitude of our company, or else because of our firebrands, or perad- venture they were gone to some other place, for, we could see none, even afar off. But the inhabitants of the next village (supposing that we were thieves by reason of our great multitude) for the defence of their own substance, and for the fear they were in, set great and mighty mastiffs upon us, worse than any wolves or bears, which they had kept and nourished for the safety of their houses; who were both. by nature very fierce and were urged on by their masters, holloing after their wont and driving them with all manner of cries; they, compassing us round about, leaped on every side, tearing us with their teeth, both man and beast, in such sort that they wounded and. pulled. many of us to the ground. Verily, it was a famous but a pitiful sight to see so many. dogs all mad with fury, some following such as fled, some invading such as. stood still, some leaping upon those which lay prostrate, and going through- out the whole of our company with savage biting. Behold, upon this, another worse danger ensued ; 373 18 LUCIUS APULEIUS culo malum maius insequitur: de summis enim tectis ac de proxumo colle rusticani illi saxa super nos raptim devolvunt, ut discernere prorsus nequire- mus qua potissimum caveremus clade, comminus canum an eminus lapidum, Quorum quidem unus caput mulieris, quae meum dorsum residebat, re- pente percussit: quo dolore commota statim fletu cum clamore sublato maritum suum pastorem illum suppetiatum ciet. At ille deum fidem clamitans et cruorem uxoris abstergens altius quiritabat: “ Quid miseros homines et laboriosos viatores tam crudelibus animis invaditis atque obteritis? — Quas praedas inhiatis? Quae damna vindicatis? At non speluncas ferarum vel cautes incolitis barbarorum, ut humano sanguine profuso gaudeatis.’’ Vix haec dicta, et statim lapidum congestus cessavit imber et infestorum canum revocata conquievit procella. Unus illinc denique de summo cupressus cacumine “At nos" inquit “Non vestrorum spoliorum cupidine latrocinamur, sed hane ipsam cladem de vestris protelamus manibus: iam denique pace tranquilla securi potestis incedere." Sic ille, sed nos plurifariam vulnerati reliquam viam capessimus, alius lapidis, alius morsus vulnera refer- entes, universi tamen saucii.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  After the meeting, while Bennett talked to some friends from New York, I went into a huddle with Adrian. “Come with me,” he said, “we’ll have a great time—an odyssey.” “You tempt me, but I can’t.” “Why not?” “Let’s not go into it again— please. ” “I’ll be around after lunch, ducks, if you change your mind. I have to speak to some people now and then get back to the pension and pack. I’ll look for you after lunch at about two. If you’re not there, I’ll wait an hour or so. Try to make up your mind, love. Don’t be scared. Bennett’s welcome to come too, of course.” He smiled his antic smile and blew me a kiss. “Bye, love,” and he hurried off. The thought of never seeing him again made me weak in the knees. Now it was up to me. He’d wait. I had three and a half hours to decide my fate. And his. And Bennett’s. I wish I could say that I did it charmingly or insouciantly or even bitchily. Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style. It can have élan in its own right. But I’m a failure even as a bitch. I sniveled. I groveled. I deliberated. I analyzed. I was a bore even to myself. I agonized over lunch in the Volksgarten with Bennett. I agonized over my agonizing. I agonized in the American Express office where, at 2 p.m. , we stood trying to decide whether to get two tickets for New York or two for London or one or none. It was all so dismal. Then I thought of Adrian’s smile and the possibility of never seeing him again and the sunny afternoons we’d spent swimming and the jokes and the dreamy drunken rides through Vienna and I raced out of American Express like a mad woman (leaving Bennett standing there) and ran through the streets. I clattered over the cobblestones in my high-heeled sandals, twisting my ankle a couple of times, sobbing out loud, my face contorted and streaked with makeup. All I knew was that I had to see him again. I thought of how he had teased me about always playing it safe. I thought of what he had said about courage, about going to the bottom of yourself and seeing what you found. I thought of all the cautious good-girl rules I had lived by—the good student, the dutiful daughter, the guilty faithful wife who committed adultery only in her own head—and I decided that for once I was going to be brave and follow my feelings no matter what the consequences. I thought of Dr. Happe saying: “You’re not a secretary, you’re a poet—why do you expect your life to be uncomplicated?” I thought of D.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Broca localized the “inner beast” in what he believed to be an ancient “lobe” deep within the human brain. He named it le grand lobe limbique, or “the limbic lobe.” Broca did not brand his supposed lobe as the seat of emotion (actually, he thought it housed the sense of smell and other primitive survival circuitry), but he did treat limbic tissue as a single, unified entity, laying the first stone on a path toward essentializing it as the home of emotion. Over the next century, Broca’s limbic lobe morphed into a unified “limbic system” for emotion, guided by other believers in the classical view. This so-called system was said to be evolutionarily old; to be virtually unchanged from its origin in non-human mammals; and to control the heart, lungs, and other internal organs of the body. It allegedly lay between ancient “reptilian” circuits in the brainstem for hunger, thirst, and so on, and the newer, uniquely human layers of cortex that regulate mankind’s animalistic emotions. This illusory hierarchy embodied Darwin’s ideas about human evolution—base appetites having evolved first, followed by wild emotional passions, with rationality as our crowning glory.27 Scientists inspired by the classical view have claimed to localize many different emotions to limbic brain regions, such as the amygdala, that are (allegedly) under the control of the cortex and cognition. Modern neuroscience, however, has shown that the so-called limbic system is a fiction, and experts in brain evolution no longer take it seriously, let alone consider it a system. Accordingly, it’s not the home of emotion in the brain, which is unsurprising because no single brain area is dedicated to emotion. The word “limbic” still has meaning (when referring to brain anatomy), but the limbic system concept was just another example of applying an essentialist, Darwin-flavored ideology to the structure of the human body and brain.28 Long before Broca fashioned his first brain blob, the classical and construction views of human nature were at war. In Ancient Greece, Plato divided the human mind into three types of essences: rational thoughts, passions (which today we would call emotions), and appetites like hunger and sex drive. Rational thought was in charge, controlling the passions and appetites, an arrangement that Plato described as a charioteer wrangling two winged horses. A hundred years earlier, however, his countryman Heraclitus (chapter 2) was arguing that the human mind constructs perception in the moment, like constructing a river from countless drops of water. In Ancient Eastern philosophy, traditional Buddhism enumerated more than fifty discrete mental essences, called dharmas, some of which bear a striking resemblance to the so-called basic emotions of the classical view. Centuries later, a radical revision of Buddhism recast the dharmas as human constructions dependent on concepts.29

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  They showed her a picture and then immediately blasted a boat horn at one hundred decibels to startle her. This sound was meant to trigger SM’s fear response if she had one. At the same time, they measured SM’s skin conductance, which many scientists believe to be a measure of fear and is related to amygdala activity. After many repetitions of the picture followed by the horn blast, they showed SM the picture alone and measured her response. People with intact amygdalae would have learned to associate the picture with the startling sound, so if just shown the picture, their brain would predict the horn blast and their skin conductance would jump. But no matter how many times scientists paired the picture and the loud sound, SM’s skin conductance didn’t increase when viewing the picture alone. The experimenters concluded that SM could not learn to fear new objects. 32 Overall, SM seemed fearless, and her damaged amygdalae seemed to be the reason. From this and other similar evidence, scientists concluded that a properly functioning amygdala was the brain center for fear. But then, a funny thing happened. Scientists found that SM could see fear in body postures and hear fear in voices. They even found a way to make SM feel terror, by asking her to breathe air that was loaded with extra carbon dioxide. Lacking the normal degree of oxygen, SM panicked. (Don’t worry, she was not in danger.) So SM could clearly feel and perceive fear under some circumstances, even without her amygdalae. 33 As brain lesion research progressed, other people with amygdala damage were discovered and tested, and the clear and specific link between fear and the amygdala dissolved. Perhaps the most important counterevidence came from a pair of identical twins who lost the supposed fear-related parts of their amygdalae to Urbach-Wiethe disease. Both were diagnosed at the age of twelve, have normal intelligence, and have a high school education. Despite their identical DNA, equivalent brain damage, and a common environment both as children and adults, the twins have very different profiles regarding fear. One twin, BG, is much like SM: she has similar fear-related deficits yet experiences fear when breathing carbon dioxide–loaded air. The other twin, AM, has basically normal responses during fear: other brain networks are compensating for her missing amygdalae. So we have identical twins, with identical DNA, suffering from identical brain damage, living in highly similar environments, but one has some fear-related deficits while the other has none. 34 These findings undermine the idea that the amygdala contains the circuit for fear. They point instead to the idea that the brain must have multiple ways of creating fear, and therefore the emotion category “Fear” cannot be necessarily localized to a specific region. Scientists have studied other emotion categories in lesion patients besides fear, and the results have been similarly variable.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Vous voilà dans de beaux draps, mon vieux.” His French was improving. I looked around. Perhaps, if—Perhaps I could—On my hands and knees? Risk it? “Alors, que fait-on?” he asked watching me closely. I stooped. He did not move. I stooped lower. “My dear sir,” he said, “stop trifling with life and death. I am a playwright. I have written tragedies, comedies, fantasies. I have made private movies out of Justine and other eighteenth-century sexcapades. I’m the author of fifty-two successful scenarios. I know all the ropes. Let me handle this. There should be a poker somewhere, why don’t I fetch it, and then we’ll fish out your property.” Fussily, busybodily, cunningly, he had risen again while he talked. I groped under the chest trying at the same time to keep an eye on him. All of a sudden I noticed that he had noticed that I did not seem to have noticed Chum protruding from beneath the other corner of the chest. We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other’s arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us. In its published form, this book is being read, I assume, in the first years of 2000 A.D. (1935 plus eighty or ninety, live long, my love); and elderly readers will surely recall at this point the obligatory scene in the Westerns of their childhood. Our tussle, however, lacked the ox-stunning fisticuffs, the flying furniture. He and I were two large dummies, stuffed with dirty cotton and rags. It was a silent, soft, formless tussle on the part of two literati, one of whom was utterly disorganized by a drug while the other was handicapped by a heart condition and too much gin. When at last I had possessed myself of my precious weapon, and the scenario writer had been reinstalled in his low chair, both of us were panting as the cowman and the sheepman never do after their battle. I decided to inspect the pistol—our sweat might have spoiled something—and regain my wind before proceeding to the main item in the program. To fill in the pause, I proposed he read his own sentence—in the poetical form I had given it. The term “poetical justice” is one that may be most happily used in this respect. I handed him a neat typescript. “Yes,” he said, “splendid idea. Let me fetch my reading glasses” (he attempted to rise). “No.” “Just as you say. Shall I read out loud?” “Yes.” “Here goes. I see it’s in verse. Because you took advantage of a sinner because you took advantage because you took because you took advantage of my disadvantage … That’s good, you know. That’s damned good.” … when I stood Adam-naked

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Claire sat down on the desk and looked up into Zora’s eyes. Her mascara had been ineptly applied, lashes welded together. ‘Of course,’ said Zora. ‘It’s the big one – it’s been postponed. Howard’s going to come out all guns blazing about Monty Kipps’s lectures. Since no one else seems to have the balls.’ ‘Hmm,’ said Claire, made awkward by the mention of Howard. ‘Oh, that, yes.’ Claire looked away from Zora and out of the window. ‘Everybody’s going, for once,’ said Zora. ‘It’s basically got down to a battle for the soul of this university. Howard says it’s the most important meeting Wellington’s had in a long time.’ This was the case. It would also be the first interdisciplinary faculty meeting since all the mess of last year had come into the open. It was more than a month away, but this morning’s memo had set the scene all too clearly for Claire: that chilly library, the whispers, the eyes – averted and staring – Howard in an armchair avoiding her, Claire’s colleagues enjoying him avoiding her. And this was not to mention the usual tabling of motions, blocked votes, rabid speech-making, complaints, demands, counter-demands. And Jack French directing it all, slowly, very slowly. It didn’t seem to Claire that, in this vital stage of her psychic recovery, she should have to contend with such intense spiritual and mental degradation. ‘Yes . . . Now, Zora, you know there are people in the college who don’t approve of our class – I mean they don’t approve of people like Chantelle . . . people like Carl , being a part of our community here at Wellington. It’s going to be on the agenda at that meeting. There’s a general conservative trend sweeping this university right now, and it really, really frightens me. And they don’t want to hear from me . They’ve already decided I’m the communist loony-tune anti-war poetess or whatever they think I am. I think we need a strong advocate for this class from the other  the anatomy lesson side. So we’re not just arguing the same stupid dialectic over and over. And I think a student would be much more appropriate – to make the case. Somebody who has benefited from the experience of learning alongside these people. Someone who could . . . well, attend in my place. Make a barnstorming speech. About something they believed in.’

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  You look out the window and see an African American man attempting to force open the door of a nearby house. Being a dutiful citizen, you call 911, and the police arrive and arrest the perpetrator. Congratulations, you have just brought about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as it happened on July 16, 2009. Gates was trying to force open the front door of his own home, which had become stuck while he was traveling. Affective realism strikes again. The real-life eyewitness in this incident had an affective feeling, presumably based on her concepts about crime and skin color, and made a mental inference that the man outside the window had intent to commit a crime. 46 A similar bout of affective realism gave birth to Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. This law permits the use of deadly force in self- defense if you reasonably believe you’re in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm. A real-life incident was the catalyst for the law, but not in the way that you might think. Here’s how the story is usually told: In 2004, an elderly couple was asleep in their trailer home in Florida. An intruder tried to break in, so the husband, James Workman, grabbed a gun and shot him. Now here’s the true, tragic backstory: Workman’s trailer was in a hurricane- damaged area, and the man he shot, Rodney Cox, was an employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Workman, mostly likely under the influence of affective realism, perceived that Cox meant him harm and opened fire on an innocent man. Nevertheless, the inaccurate first story became a primary justification for Florida’s law. 47 The very history of stand your ground laws is, ironically, potent evidence against their value. It’s impossible to determine reasonable fear for one’s life in a society where racist stereotypes abound and affective realism literally transforms how people see each other. The whole line of reasoning for stand your ground is gutted by affective realism. If stand your ground doesn’t scare the crap out of you, think about the impact of affective realism on people who legally carry concealed weapons. Affective realism indisputably influences people’s perceptions of threat; therefore it virtually assures that innocent people will be shot by accident. It’s simple: you predict a threat, sensory information from the world says otherwise, but then your control network downplays the prediction error to maintain the prediction of threat. Bam, you’ve shot a harmless fellow citizen. Human brains are built for this sort of delusion, through the same process that produces daydreams and imagination. I will not wade any further into the national debate about firearms for now, but from a purely scientific perspective, consider this. The founding fathers of the United States had good reasons for protecting a “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” in the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but they were not neuroscientists.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Suppose you’re walking alone in the forest, and you hear a rustle in the leaves and see a vague movement on the ground. As always, your body-budgeting regions initiate predictions—say, that there’s a snake nearby. These predictions prepare you to see and hear a snake. At the same time, these regions predict that your heart rate should increase and your blood vessels should dilate, for instance, in preparation to run. A pounding heart and surging blood would cause interoceptive sensations, so your brain must predict those sensations as well. As a result, your brain simulates the snake, the bodily changes, and the bodily sensations. These predictions translate into feeling; in this case, you’ll begin to feel agitated.50 What happens next? Maybe a snake slithers out from the brush. In this case, the sensory input matches your predictions and you run. Or perhaps no snake is present—the leaves were just rustled by the wind—but you see a snake anyway. That’s affective realism. Now consider the third possibility: there is no snake, and you don’t see a snake. In this case, your visual predictions of a snake are corrected quickly; however, your interoceptive predictions are not. Your body-budgeting regions keep predicting adjustments to your budget long after the predicted need is over. You therefore may take a long time to calm down, even if you know there is nothing wrong. Remember when I compared your brain to a scientist who makes and tests hypotheses? Your body-budgeting regions are like a mostly deaf scientist: they make predictions but have a hard time listening to the incoming evidence.51 Some of the time, your body-budgeting regions are sluggish to correct their predictions. Think about the last time you ate too much and felt bloated. You might be able to blame your body-budgeting regions. One of their jobs is to predict your level of circulating glucose, which determines how much food you need, but they don’t receive the message “I’m full” from your body in a timely manner, so you keep eating. If you’ve ever heard the advice, “Wait 20 minutes before you take a second helping, to see if you’re really still hungry,” now you know why it works. Whenever you make a big deposit or withdrawal from your body budget—eating, exercising, injuring yourself—you might have to wait for your brain to catch up. Marathon runners learn this; they feel fatigue early in the race when their body budget is still solvent, so they keep running until the unpleasant feeling goes away. They ignore the affective realism that insists they’re out of energy.52

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  “No,” I said. “On second thoughts, I shall have it all done by Dr. Molnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.” I do not know if any of my readers will ever have a chance to say that. It is a delicious dream feeling. Clare’s uncle remained sitting on the desk, still looking dreamy, but his foot had stopped push-rocking the cradle of rosy anticipation. On the other hand, his nurse, a skeleton-thin, faded girl, with the tragic eyes of unsuccessful blondes, rushed after me so as to be able to slam the door in my wake. Push the magazine into the butt. Press home until you hear or feel the magazine catch engage. Delightfully snug. Capacity: eight cartridges. Full Blued. Aching to be discharged. 34A gas station attendant in Parkington explained to me very clearly how to get to Grimm Road. Wishing to be sure Quilty would be at home, I attempted to ring him up but learned that his private telephone had recently been disconnected. Did that mean he was gone? I started to drive to Grimm Road, twelve miles north of the town. By that time night had eliminated most of the landscape and as I followed the narrow winding highway, a series of short posts, ghostly white, with reflectors, borrowed my own lights to indicate this or that curve. I could make out a dark valley on one side of the road and wooded slopes on the other, and in front of me, like derelict snowflakes, moths drifted out of the blackness into my probing aura. At the twelfth mile, as foretold, a curiously hooded bridge sheathed me for a moment and, beyond it, a white-washed rock loomed on the right, and a few car lengths further, on the same side, I turned off the highway up gravelly Grimm Road. For a couple of minutes all was dank, dark, dense forest. Then, Pavor Manor, a wooden house with a turret, arose in a circular clearing. Its windows glowed yellow and red; its drive was cluttered with half a dozen cars. I stopped in the shelter of the trees and abolished my lights to ponder the next move quietly. He would be surrounded by his henchmen and whores. I could not help seeing the inside of that festive and ramshackle castle in terms of “Troubled Teens,” a story in one of her magazines, vague “orgies,” a sinister adult with penele cigar, drugs, bodyguards. At least, he was there. I would return in the torpid morning.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Now she has left her fingerprints on Beethoven’s eyes. Something dreadful will surely happen. On the table is a skull. Beside it is a candlestick. This is a still life her grandfather has set up. Are there such things as still lives? On the easel is a half-finished painting of the skull and candlestick. Which is more still? The skull? Or the still life of the skull? Which stillness will last longer? In the corner of the room is a closet. Her husband’s green army jacket hangs there, empty. The sleeves flap in the wind. Is he dead? She is terribly frightened. She runs through the studio trapdoor and down the steps. Suddenly she falls, knowing she is going to die when she hits bottom. She struggles to scream and in the struggle wakes herself up. She is surprised to find herself in Paris rather than her parents’ house. He still lies beside her as if dead. She looks at his sleeping face, the long mouth with its curled-up corners, the sketchy eyebrows like Chinese calligraphy, and she thinks that next year this time they will not be together or else they will have a baby who does not look like her. “Merry Christmas,” he says, opening his eyes. They make love hopefully. It is freezing and last night’s rain has made the streets glassy. They dress and go out for a walk. He holds her tightly, but anyway she keeps slipping. He admonishes her to “take small steps.” “As if my feet were bound,” she says. He doesn’t laugh. They walk along the Ile St. Louis and admire the architecture. They point out quaint stone carvings on the second stories of townhouses. They stop to watch three old men who are catching little wriggling fishes in the gray and swollen Seine. They eat two dozen oysters in an Alsatian restaurant and then have onion tarts and get drunk on wine. They walk the glassy streets again, holding on to each other for dear life. She wonders where she could go if she left him. The home she dreamed of last night comes back to her in snatches. She knows she can’t go there. She has nowhere to go. Nowhere. She holds him tightly. “I love you,” she says. When it gets darker they stop for bûche de Noël and coffee in a little restaurant facing Notre Dame from the Left Bank. Is he thinking of leaving her? She never knows what he’s thinking. They pretend it was a happy, carefree day.