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 Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Hereat the maiden was greatly afraid, and kissed her hand and said: * O mother, take pity upon me and my wretched fortune, for the sake of human kindness, for I think there be mercy ripe and frank in your venerable hoar head, and hear the sum of my calamity. There was a comely young man of the first rank in the city, who for his bounty and grace was beloved entirely as a son of all the town, my cousin-germain, and but three years older than 1; from our early years we two were nourished and brought up in one house, and lay under one roof, aye, in one chamber and bed, and at length by promise of marriage and by eonsent of our parents we were by law contracted together; the marriage day was come, my spouse was accompanied with his parents, kinsfolk, and friends, and made sacrifice in the temples and publie places; the whole house was garnished with laurel, and torches were set in every place as they chanted in honour of Hymenaeus, and when my unhappy mother was pampering me in her lap and decking me like a bride, kissing me sweetly and praying earnestly for the hope of future children, behold there came in suddenly a great multitude of thieves, armed like men of war, with naked swords in their hands, who went not about todo any slaughter, neither to take anything away, but brake into the chamber where I was, and violently took me, now half dead with fear, out of my mother’s arms, when none of the family would fight nor resist ever so little. In this sort was our marriage broken and disturbed, 183 LUCIUS APULEIUS medio matris gremio rapuere. Sic ad instar Athra- cidis et Protesilai dispectae disturbataeque nuptiae. 27 Sed ecce saevissimo somnio mihi nunc etiam redinte- gratur, immo vero cumulatur infortunium meum: nam visa sum mihi de domo, de thalamo, de cubiculo, de toro denique ipso violenter extracta per solitudines avias infortunatissimi mariti nomen invocare, eumque, ut primum meis amplexibus viduatus est, adhue un- guentis madidum, coronis floridum consequi vestigio me pedibus fugientem alienis: utque clamore percito formosae raptum uxoris conquerens populi testatur auxilium, quidam de latronibus importunae perse- cutionis indignatione permotus saxo grandi pro pedi- bus arrepto misellum iuvenem maritum meum per- cussum interemit: talis aspectus atrocitate perterrita somno funesto pavens excussa sum." Tune fletibus eius assuspirans anus sic incipit: * Bono animo esto, mi herilis, nec vanis somniorum figmentis terreare : nam praeter quod diurnae quietis imagines falsae perhibentur, tunc etiam nocturnae visiones contrarios eventus nonnunquam pronuntiant. Denique flere et vapulare et nonnunquam iugulari lucrosum prosper- umque proventum nuntiant, contra ridere et mellitis dulciolis ventrem saginare vel in voluptatem Vene- riam convenire tristitiae animi, languori corporis damnisque ceteris anxiatum iri praedicant. Sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis protinus avocabo "; et incipit :

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The man under the bed The man who has been there for years waiting The man who waits for my floating bare foot The man who is silent as dustballs riding the darkness The man whose breath is the breathing of small white butterflies The man whose breathing I hear when I pick up the phone The man in the mirror whose breath blackens silver The boneman in closets who rattles the mothballs The man at the end of the end of the line I met him tonight I always meet him He stands in the amber air of a bar When the shrimp curl like beckoning fingers & ride through the air on their toothpick skewers When the ice cracks & I am about to fall through he arranges his face around its hollows he opens his pupilless eyes at me For years he has waited to drag me down & now he tells me he has only waited to take me home We waltz through the street like death & the maiden We float through the wall of the wall of my room If he’s my dream he will fold back into my body His breath writes letters of mist on the glass of my cheeks I wrap myself around him like the darkness I breathe into his mouth & make him real ELEVEN Existentialism Reconsidered …existentialists declare That they are in complete despair, Yet go on writing. —W. H. Auden W hen I threw in my lot with Adrian Goodlove, I entered a world in which the rules we lived by were his rules—although, of course, he pretended there were no rules. It was forbidden, for example, to inquire what we would do tomorrow. Existentialists were not supposed to mention the word “tomorrow.” It was to be banished from our vocabulary. We were forbidden to talk about the future or to act as if the future existed. The future did not exist. Only our driving existed and our campsites and hotels. Only our conversations existed and the view beyond the windshield (which Adrian called the “windscreen”). Behind us was the past—which we invoked more and more to pass the time and to amuse each other (in the way that parents make up games of geography or identify-the-song-title for their bored children during long car rides). We told long stories about our pasts, embellishing, embroidering, and dramatizing in the manner of novelists.

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

  Even though he vanquished essentialism from our understanding of the natural world, when it came to humans’ place in that world, essentialism got the better of him. Expression covered all three parts of the classical view of human nature: that animals and humans share universal essences of emotion, that emotions seek expression in the face and body outside of our control, and that they are triggered by the outside world. In the years that followed, however, Darwin’s own essentialism came back to bite him in the behind. As Darwin’s intellectual descendants adopted his views, shaping the classical view, they ironically misinterpreted (or twisted?) his own words to conform more fully to essentialism. Darwin indeed stated in Expression that humans display universal facial expressions that evolved from a common ancestor: With mankind some expressions, such as the bristling of the hair under the influence of extreme terror, or the uncovering of the teeth under that of furious rage, can hardly be understood, except on the belief that man once existed in a much lower and animal-like condition. The community of certain expressions in distinct though allied species, as in the movements of the same facial muscles during laughter by man and by various monkeys, is rendered somewhat more intelligible, if we believe in their descent from a common progenitor. 21 On first glance, you might think Darwin is saying that facial expressions are a useful and functional product of evolution, and, in fact, the classical view was founded on this idea. However, Darwin actually said the opposite. He wrote that smiles, frowns, eye-widening, and other expressions were useless, vestigial movements—products of evolution that no longer serve a function, like the human tailbone and appendix and the wings of the ostrich. He made this statement over a dozen times in Expression. Emotional expressions were primarily a compelling example for his broader arguments about evolution. If these expressions are useless in humans but shared with other animals, according to Darwin, they must exist because they were functional in a long-gone, common ancestor. Vestigial expressions would provide strong evidence that humans were animals, justifying his earlier views about natural selection from On the Origin of Species in 1859, which he then applied to human evolution in his next book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in 1871. 22 If Darwin didn’t claim that emotional expressions evolved to serve a survival function, then why do so many scientists fervently believe that he claimed this? I discovered the answer in the manuscripts of an early-twentieth-century American psychologist, Floyd Allport, who wrote extensively on Darwin’s ideas. In 1924, Allport made a sweeping inference from Darwin’s writing that significantly changed the original meaning.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  In his frenzy to have a constant audience he even slapped my cheek once or twice to awaken me. Dazed and bleary-eyed, I listened. And listened. And listened. After the fifth night, it was no longer possible to doubt that Brian had no plans for science fiction. He himself was the Second Coming. The recognition was slow to dawn. When it did, I wasn’t actually sure he wasn’t God. But, according to his logic, if he was Jesus, then I was the Holy Ghost. And bleary-eyed as I was, I knew that was crazy. On Friday, Brian’s boss left town for the weekend and delegated him to close an important deal with the makers of an oven-cleaning product called Miracle Foam. Brian was supposed to meet with the Miracle Foam people in the computer center on Saturday, but he never made it there. The Miracle Foam people waited. Then they called me. Then they called me again. Brian did not come. I phoned everyone I could think of and finally just sat at home chewing my nails and knowing something dreadful was going to happen. At five o’clock, Brian called to read me a “poem” he claimed to have written while walking across Central Park Lake. It went: If Miracle Foam is only a bubble, Why does it cause us so damned much trouble? If we don’t act soon the world will be rubble All for the sake of a silly bubble. “How do you like it, honey?” he asked, all naiveté. “Brian—do you realize that the Miracle Foam people have been trying to reach you all day?” “Isn’t it brilliant? It really sums the whole thing up, I think. I’m planning to send it to The New York Times. The only thing is I wonder whether The Times will print a poem with the word ‘damned’ in it. What do you think?” “Brian—do you realize that I’ve been sitting here all day answering calls from Miracle Foam? Where in hell have you been?” “That’s precisely where I’ve been.” “Where?” “In hell. Just as you’re in hell and I’m in hell and we’re all in hell. How can you worry about a mere bubble like Miracle Foam?” “What in God’s name are you going to do about the contract?” “Just that.” “Just what?” “In God’s name, I’m going to forget about it. I’m not going to do anything about it. Why don’t you come downtown and meet me and I’ll show you my poem.” “Where are you?” “In hell.” “OK, I know you’re in hell, but where should I meet you?” “You ought to know. You sent me here.” “Where?” “To hell. Where I am now. Where you are now. You’re pretty slow, baby.” “Brian, please be reasonable—” “I’m perfectly reasonable. You’re the one who cares about a mere bubble. You’re the one who thinks it matters if there are calls from Miracle Foam.”

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely. Mrs. Hays, the brisk, brickly rouged, blue-eyed widow who ran the motor court, asked me if I were Swiss perchance, because her sister had married a Swiss ski instructor. I was, whereas my daughter happened to be half Irish. I registered, Hays gave me the key and a twinkling smile, and, still twinkling, showed me where to park the car; Lo crawled out and shivered a little: the luminous evening air was decidedly crisp. Upon entering the cabin, she sat down on a chair at a card table, buried her face in the crook of her arm and said she felt awful. Shamming, I thought, shamming, no doubt, to evade my caresses; I was passionately parched; but she began to whimper in an unusually dreary way when I attempted to fondle her. Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! I took her temperature, orally, then looked up a scribbled formula I fortunately had in a jotter and after laboriously reducing the, meaningless to me, degrees Fahrenheit to the intimate centrigrade of my childhood, found she had 40.4, which at least made sense. Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperature—even exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebrae—and I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse, I wrapped her up in a laprobe and carried her into the car. Kind Mrs. Hays in the meantime had alerted the local doctor. “You are lucky it happened here,” she said; for not only was Blue the best man in the district, but the Elphinstone hospital was as modern as modern could be, despite its limited capacity. With a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit, thither I drove, half-blinded by a royal sunset on the lowland side and guided by a little old woman, a portable witch, perhaps his daughter, whom Mrs. Hays had lent me, and whom I was never to see again.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  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 In 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.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Remember,” he said, “the accursed ones12 formed in the clouds, who when gorged, fought Theseus with their double breasts; and the Hebrews who showed themselves soft at the drinking, wherefore Gideon would have them not for comrades when he came down the hills to Midian.”13 Thus we passed close against one of the two margins, hearing sins of gluttony, once followed by woeful gains. Then, spread out along the solitary way, full a thousand paces and more bore us onward, each in contemplation without a word. “What go ye thus pondering on, ye lone three,” a sudden voice did say; wherefore I startled as frightened and timid beasts do. I raised my head to see who it was, and never in a furnace were glasses or metals seen so glowing and red, as I saw one who said: “If it please you to mount upward, here must a turn be given; hence goeth he who desires to go for peace.” His countenance had bereft me of sight; wherefore I turned me back to my Teachers, like one who goeth according as he listens. And as the May breeze, herald of the dawn, stirs and breathes forth sweetness, all impregnate with grass and with flowers, such a wind felt I give on the middle of my brow, and right well I felt the pinions move which wafted ambrosial fragrance to my senses; and I heard say: “Blessed are they who are illumined by so much grace, that the love of taste kindleth not too great desire in their breasts, and who hunger always so far as is just.”14 1. For Piccarda, see Par. iii.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  stranger here, and not without cause you are ignorant how you are in Thessaly, where the women witches do bite off by morsels the flesh of the faces of dead men, and thereby work their sorceries and enchantments.’ ‘Then, quoth I, ‘In good fellowship tell me the order of this custody of the dead and how it is?’ ‘Marry, quoth he, ‘ First you must watch all the night, with your eyes staring and bent continually upon the corpse, without winking, never looking off nor even moving aside: for these witches do change their skin and turn themselves at will into sundry kinds of beasts, whereby they deceive the eyes even of the sun and of very Justice ; sometimes they are transformed into birds, sometimes into dogs and mice, and sometimes into flies; moreover they will charm the keepers of the corpse asleep, neither can it be declared what means and shifts these wicked women do use to bring their purpose to pass: and the reward for such dangerous watching is no more than four or six pieces of gold. But hearken further, which I had well nigh forgotten, if the keeper of the dead do not render on the morning following the corpse whole and sound as he received the same, he shall be punished in this sort. That is; if the corpse be diminished or spoiled in any part, the same shall be diminished and spoiled in the face of the keeper to patch it up withal.’ * Which when I heard J took a good heart and went unto the crier and bade him cease, for I would take the matter in hand, and so I demanded what I should have. * Marry,’ quoth he,‘ A thousand pence ; but beware I say, young man, that you do well defend the dead corpse from the wicked witches, for he was the son of one of the chiefest of the city.’ ‘Tush,’ said I, ‘You speak you cannot tell what ; j 83 LUCIUS APULEIUS narras et nugas meras. Vides hominem ferreum et insomnem, certe perspicaciorem ipso Lynceo vel Argo et oculeum totum.’ “Vix finieram, et illico me perducit ad domum quampiam, cuius ipsis foribus obsaeptis per quan- dambrevem posticulam intro vocat me et conclave quoddam obseratis luminibus umbrosum demonstrat matronamque flebilem fusca veste contectam, quam propter assistens ‘Hie inquit * Auctoratus ad cus- todiam mariti tui fidenter accessit. At illa crini- bus antependulis hinc inde demotis etiam in maerore luculentam proferens faciem, meque respiciens ‘ Vide oro’ inquit ‘Quam expergite munus obeas. ‘Sine cura sis’ ; inquam * Modo corollarium idoneum com-

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  allocutus et paulisper hilaro vultu renidens, quan- tumque poteram laetiorem me refingens, comiter abeuntes magistratus appello. Et ecce quidam intro currens famulus * Rogat te" ait * Tua parens Byrrhaena et convivii, cui te sero desponderas, iam appropinquantis admonet," Ad haec ego formidans et procul perhorrescens etiam ipsam domum eius, “Quam vellem” inquam * Parens, iussis tuis obsequium commodare, si per fidem liceret id facere: hospes enim meus Milo per hodierni diei praesentissimum numen adiurans effecit, ut eius hodiernae cenae pignerarer, nec ipse discedit nec me digredi patitur. Prohine epulare vadi- monium differamus.” | Haec adhue me loquente manu firmiter iniecta Milo iussis balnearibus assequi producit ad lavacrum proximum : at ego vitans oculos omnium et quem ipse fabricaveram risum obviorum declinans lateri eius adambulabam obtectus, nec qui laverim, qui terserim, qui domum rursum reverterim prae rubore memini, sic omnium oculis nutibus ac denique manibus denotatus impos animi stupebam; 13 Raptim denique paupertina Milonis cenula per- funetus, causatusque capitis acrem dolorem, quem mihi lacrimarum assiduitas incusserat, coneedo cubi- tum venia facile tributa, et abiectus in lectulo meo quae gesta fuerant singula maestus recordabar, quoad tandem Fotis mea, dominae suae cubitu pro- 118 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK III than L". When I had spoken these words somewhat modestly with a more cheerful countenance, and shewed myself more merry than I was before, the judges and magistrates departed, and I reverently took my leave of them and bade them farewell. And behold, by and by there came one running to me in haste, and said: “Sir, your cousin Byrrhaena desireth you to take the pains, according to your promise yesternight, to come to supper; for it is ready." But I, greatly fearing, and shrinking even afar at the very thought of her house, said unto the messenger: “My friend, I pray you to tell my cousin, your mistress, that I would willingly be at her commandment, but for breaking my troth and credit. For mine host Milo enforced me to assure him, and compelled me by the feast of this present day, that I should pledge me to his dinner and com- pany, and he goeth not forth nor suffereth me to depart from him ; wherefore I pray you to excuse me and to defer my promise until another time.” And while I was speaking these words, Milo took me by the hand and led me towards the next bath; but by the way I went crouching under him to hide myselt from the sight of men, because I had ministered such an oceasion of laughter. And when I had washed and wiped myself and returned home again, I never remembered any such thing, so greatly was I ashamed at the nodding and pointing of every person.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  quagmires and foggy marshes, and sometimes very slippery with mud and filth, whereby my legs failed me with often stumbling and falling, in such sort that I could scarce come wearily and with bruised legs to the plain field-paths. And behold by and by from behind a great company of the inhabitants of the town, armed with weapons and on horseback, overtook us, hardly pulling up the horses of their car, for they galloped furiously, they incontinently arrested Philebus and his priests, and tied them by the necks and beat them cruelly, calling them sacri- legious thieves and vile robbers, and after that they had manacled their hands they urged them furiously again and again: * Shew us," quoth they, * The cup of gold, the temptation of your crime, which you have taken privily away from the very shrine of the Mother of the gods, under the colour of your solemn religion, which you must needs perform secretly shut up in her temple; and now you think to escape in the night without punishment for your deed, leaving the boundaries of town and setting secretly forth before it be yet light." By and by one came towards me, and thrusting his hand into the bosom of the goddess which I bare, found and brought out before them all the cup which they had stole: howbeit, for all their robbery which appeared evident and plain, those accursed and vile creatures would not be con- founded or abashed, but, jesting and laughing out the matter, began to say: “Is it reason, masters, that you should thus rigorously intreat us, as often befalls innocent men, and threaten to bring the faithful priests of religion into danger of death for a small trifing cup, which the Mother of the gods deter- mined to: give to her sister for a present?" How- beit, for all their lies and cavillations, they were 415 LUCIUS APULEIUS et alias similes afannas frustra blaterantes eos re- trorsus abducunt pagani statimque vinctos in Tul- lianum compingunt cantharoque et ipso simulacro, quod gerebam, apud fani donarium redditis ac con- secratis, altera die productum me rursum voce prae- conis venui subiciunt septemque nummis carius, quam prius me comparaverat Philebus, quidam pistor de proximo castello praestinavit, protinusque . fru- mento etiam coemto affatim onustum per iter arduum scrupis et cuiuscemodi stirpibus infestum ad pistri- num, quod exercebat, perducit.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  When we began searching for the table with Bennett and the others, we found ourselves suddenly lost in a series of mirrored boxes and partitions which opened into each other. We kept walking into ourselves. As in a dream, none of the faces at the tables belonged to people we knew. We looked hard and with mounting panic. I felt I had been transported to some looking-glass world where, like the Red Queen, I would run and run and only wind up going backward. Bennett was nowhere. In a flash, I knew he had left with Marie and taken her home to bed. I was terrified. I’d finally provoked him into it. That was the end of me. I’d spend the rest of my lonely life husbandless, childless, and neglected. “Let’s go,” Adrian said. “They aren’t here. They’ve taken off.” “Maybe they couldn’t get a table and they’re waiting outside.” “We could look,” he said. But I knew the truth. I was abandoned. Bennett had left for good. At this very moment he was cupping Marie’s huge sallow ass. He was fucking her Freudian mind. On my first trip to Washington at the age of ten, I got separated from my family while touring the FBI Building. I got lost in the FBI Building, of all places. Bureau of Missing Persons. Send out alarm. This was at the absolute height of the McCarthy era and a tight-lipped FBI man was explaining various things about catching communists. I was dawdling before a glass case, dreaming into the fingerprint specimens, when the tour group rounded a corner and disappeared. I wandered about, gazing at my reflection in the exhibition cases and trying to keep down my terror. I would never be found. I was more elusive than the fingerprints of a gloved criminal. I would be diabolically interrogated by crew-cut FBI agents until I confessed that my parents were communists (they had been communists once, in fact) and we would all end our days like the Rosenbergs singing “God Bless America” in our damp cells and anticipating what it would be like to be electrocuted. At that point I began to scream. I screamed until the whole tour group doubled back and found me, right there—in a room full of clues. But now I couldn’t scream. And besides, the rock music was so loud that no one would have heard. I suddenly wanted Bennett as badly as I had wanted Adrian a few minutes before. And Bennett was gone. We left the discotheque and headed for Adrian’s car. A funny thing happened on the way to his pension. Or rather: ten funny things happened. We got lost ten times. And each of those times was unique—not just the same wrong turns over and over. Now that we were stuck with each other for eternity, fucking immediately didn’t seem quite as important. “I’m not going to tell you about all the other men I’ve fucked,” I said, being brave.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  The walls were old striped wallpaper, very splotched and discolored. I pulled my suitcase in and closed the door. I fiddled awhile with the lock before being able to work it. Finally, I sank down on the bed and began to cry. I was conscious of wanting to cry passionately and without restraint, of wanting to weep a whole ocean of tears and drown. But even my tears were blocked. There was a peculiar knot in my stomach which kept making me think of Bennett. It was almost as if my navel was attached to his so that I couldn’t even lose myself in tears without wondering and worrying about him. Where was he? Couldn’t I even cry properly until I found him? The strangest thing about crying (perhaps this is a carryover from infancy) is that we never can cry wholeheartedly without a listener—or at least a potential listener. We don’t let ourselves cry as desperately as we might. Maybe we’re afraid to sink under the surface of the tears for fear there will be no one to save us. Or maybe tears are a form of communication—like speech—and require a listener. You have to sleep, I told myself sternly. But already I could feel myself moving into a panic which recalled my worst childhood night terrors. I felt the center of myself slipping backward in time even as my adult, rational self protested. You are not a child, I said aloud, but the insane pounding of my heart continued. I was covered with cold sweat. I sat rooted to the bed. I knew I needed a bath, but would not take one because of my fear of leaving the room. I had to pee desperately, but was afraid to go out to the toilet. I did not even dare to take off my shoes (for fear the man under the bed would grab me by the foot). I did not dare wash my face (who knew what lurked behind the curtain?). I thought I saw a figure moving on the terrace outside the window. Phantom cars of light crossed the ceiling. A toilet flushed in the hall and I jumped. There were footsteps down the hall. I began to remember scenes from Murders in the Rue Morgue. I remembered some nameless movie I had seen on television at about the age of five. It showed a vampire who could fade in and out of walls. No locks could keep him out. I visualized him pulsating in and out of the dirty, splotched wallpaper. I appealed again to my adult self for help. I tried to be critical and rational. I knew what vampires stood for. I knew the man under the bed was partly my father. I thought of Groddeck’s Book of the It. The fear of the intruder is the wish for the intruder. I thought of all my sessions with Dr.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Adrian, in fact, was born in the same year as Randy (1937) and also had a younger brother he’d spent years learning how to bully. We quickly picked up the threads of these old patterns of behavior as we made our way through the labyrinth of Old Europe. We came to know the meager Austrian pension with its white lace curtains in the parlor, its window-sill full of cactuses, its red-cheeked proprietress (who always asked how many children we had—as if she had forgotten what we told her double some kilometers back), its peculiar king-sized bed with a mattress divided into three horizontal parts (the valleys coming at strategic bodily landmarks—like the breasts and genitals—so that you invariably awoke in the middle of the night with one nipple, or one testicle I suppose, wedged between part I and part II or between part II and part III). We came to know the Austrian feather beds which drench you with sweat during the early hours of the night, slither to the floor by means of witchcraft just as you fall into a deeper sleep, cause you to spend the whole night retrieving them, and then finally awaken you with monstrously puffy lips and eyes from the centuries of old dust (and other more sinister allergens) trapped within them. We came to know pension breakfasts of cold hard rolls, factory-packaged tinlets of apricot jam, meager curls of butter, and gargantuan cups of café au lait with diseased-looking skins on top. We came to know the humbler sort of campsite, with its pervasive sewer smell, long tin trough for face-washing and tooth-brushing, stagnant mosquito-breeding swimming hole (where Adrian invariably swam), and jolly German citizens who made brilliant conversation about Adrian’s English pup tent (in whose electric-blue nylon glow we slept) and interrogated us about our lives like horribly experienced spies. We came to know the German Autobahn automats with their plates of sauerkraut and knockwurst, their blotting-paper coasters advertising beer, their foul-smelling pay toilets, their vending machines for soap and towels and condoms. We came to know the German beer gardens with sticky tables and middle-aged buxom waitresses in dirndls, and drunken truck drivers who made obscene remarks to me as I made my way unsteadily to the bathroom. We were usually drunk from noon on, careening down the Autobahn in a right-hand-drive car, taking wrong turns everywhere, being tailgated by Volkswagens going 80 miles an hour, by Mercedes Benzes blinking their headlights aggressively and doing 110, by BMWs trying to outrun the Mercedes- Benzes. All a German had to see were our English license plates and he was out to run us off the road. Adrian drove like a maniac, too, passing on the wrong side, weaving in and out of the truck lane, allowing himself to get riled by the Germans and trying to outrun them. There was part of me that was terrified by this, but another part of me which thrilled to it.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  mercenary soldiers, fighting on behalf of the Persian prince Darius in his attempt to take over the empire from the king, his brother, suddenly found themselves on the losing side of the battle, and now trapped deep in the heart of Persia. When the victorious Persians tricked the leaders of the mercenaries into coming to a meeting to discuss their fate and then executed them all, it became clear to the surviving soldiers that they would be either executed as well or sold into slavery by the next day. That night they wandered through their camp bemoaning their fate. Among them was the writer Xenophon, who had gone along with the soldiers as a kind of roving reporter. Xenophon had studied philosophy as a student of Socrates. He believed in the supremacy of rational thinking, of seeing the entire picture, the general idea behind the fleeting appearances of daily life. He had practiced such thinking skills over several years. That night he had a vision of how the Greeks could escape their trap and return home. He saw them moving swiftly and stealthily through Persia, sacrificing everything for speed. He saw them leaving right away, using the element of surprise to gain some distance. He thought ahead—of the terrain, the route to take, the many enemies they would face, how they could help and use citizens who revolted against the Persians. He saw them getting rid of their wagons, living off the land and moving quickly, even in winter. In the space of a few hours, he had conjured up the details of the retreat, all inspired by his overall vision of their fast zigzag route to the Mediterranean and home. Although he had no military experience, his vision was so complete, and he communicated it with such confidence, that the soldiers nominated him as their de facto leader. It took several years and involved many ensuing challenges, each time Xenophon applying his global vision to determine a strategy, but in the end, he proved the power of such rational thinking by leading them to safety despite the immense odds against them. This story embodies the essence of all authority and the most essential element in establishing it. Most people are locked in the moment. They are prone to overreacting and panicking, to seeing only a narrow part of the reality facing the group. They cannot entertain alternative ideas or prioritize. Those who maintain their presence of mind and elevate their perspective above the moment tap into the visionary powers of the human mind and cultivate that third eye for unseen forces and trends. They stand out from the group, fulfill the true function of leadership, and create the aura of authority by seeming to possess the godlike ability to read the future. And this is a power that can be practiced and developed and applied to any situation. As early in life as possible, you train yourself to disconnect from

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  So when Brad makes a choking noise out in the kitchen all hell breaks loose here in the dining room. My mother leaps up, throwing the shirt one way and the fringe the other, Linda drops her pencil, Yimmer barks. Brad appears in the doorway, enormous-eyed. He points back to the kitchen with his spoon and then pushes past my mother into the living room where he turns and points again, then buries his shocked face in a sofa pillow. There’s something in the kitchen! The rest of us crowd through the doorway to see. Nothing. My mother screams. I look around wildly and then I see it. Through the glass of the back door, framed by my grandmother’s lace curtains, a face wearing a creature-feature mask. Black hair, forehead, two stunned eyes, and then the rest is blood. It looks like my dad. He fumbles for the doorknob but can’t see through the mask, his hand slips and he cries out, something slides from his mouth and lands on his shirtfront; a wad of blood. My mother springs forward, opens the door, and we get the full picture. His clothes are frozen to his body and over it all, shirt, sport coat, trousers, is dark blood, coming from his mouth. Some of it is frozen and some of it is fresh. He can’t move at all and when Linda and my mother try to pull him inside he groans and resists. We get him up over the threshold, my mother on one side, Linda and me on the other, and then try to sit him in a chair in the middle of the kitchen. His legs won’t bend. He groans again and then, with a noise like cracking ice, sits. My mother opens the oven door and turns it up to five hundred. She wants to look inside his mouth but he won’t let her, so she gets a clean dish towel, wets it under the faucet, and starts wiping the blood from his face while Linda and I try to remove his shoes. The laces are stiff but the shoes come off okay. When we peel the socks away, his feet look like long yellow boats. My mother gasps when she sees them, then hands each of us a towel and tells us to rub. When we do, he makes the groaning noise again so we stop. She resituates him so he’s closer to the oven, and then fills a dishpan with tepid water. When she sets his feet in it he makes a moaning sound. Still working on his face, she tells me to go to the phone. I do. She tells me the number to dial and what to say. My aunt answers. “It’s Jo,” I say. “Well, hi Jo,” she answers cheerfully. “My mom needs you right now,” I recite. There is no pause. She’s on her way. Twenty minutes. The oven is blasting heat out into the kitchen.

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

  239Lecture 24—Apocalyptic Faith in the 1800s and Beyond õSome evangelical writers began interpreting the bows and swords of scripture as metaphors for the latest developments in nuclear technology. They said the United Nations was a tool of the Antichrist, and that he would use these kinds of organizations to seek world dominion. õEvents in Israel and the conf licts of the Middle East have always been of interest to premillennialists. Recall that Darby preached that Jews would establish a sovereign nation in Palestine, only to suffer great persecution at the hands of world leaders, leaving a small number of survivors to accept Christ. õDarby’s followers got very excited in 1948 when the state of Israel was established, and they’ve followed Israeli affairs closely ever since. Israelis have been understandably ambivalent about this interest in their lives, but in general they’ve been savvy about reaching out to American evangelicals. AMERICAN POLITICS õWhat happens when we look for evidence for the role of prophecy in evangelical leaders’ political decisions? The evidence is unclear. Consider the Ronald Reagan presidency, when several administration officials were adherents of this theology. Reagan himself was very interested in prophecy. õIn 1983 he told an Israeli lobbyist: “You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets ... and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about.” Yet he didn’t initiate nuclear war, nor did he go out of his way to befriend Israel. And we now know that Reagan wanted nuclear weapons eliminated. 240The History of Christianity II õBelief in the coming apocalypse may have encouraged evangelicals to accept nuclear confrontation as part of God’s plan, but very few wanted to help actually bring on Armageddon. Throughout the Cold War, it seems that a different religious fear—the fear of godless communism— united evangelicals and motivated their political action. SUGGESTED READING Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More. Pagels, Revelations. Rowe, God’s Strange Work. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhy have scripture’s references to the Apocalypse produced such a wide range of interpretation? äWhat explains the appeal of William Miller’s and John Nelson Darby’s messages to their followers? äHow have ideas about the end times inf luenced politics? 241 LECTURE 25 THE CHURCH AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION T he Russian Revolution of 1917 is a good candidate for the single most cataclysmic event in the history of religion in the 20 th century. When Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks emerged victorious after several years of civil war, their communist propaganda claimed that almost overnight, Russia had gone from one of the most religious civilizations in the world to the atheist state of every Marxist’s dreams. But to understand what the revolution meant for Russian religion, this lecture first backtracks and explores the religious landscape generations earlier, then looks at the state of Russian religion after the revolution.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  An example of this fixity follows: A woman loves nature, parks, meadows and grassy knolls; however, every time she smells new-mown grass she feels nauseated, anxious and dizzy. Her belief (M) is that grass is something to be avoided. The olfactory and visual image (I) is associated with, or coupled to, the sensations of nausea and dizziness (S) coming from her visceral and vestibular systems. This positive feedback loop, with negative consequences, is an enigma. Part of the event is disassociated from her awareness: she has no idea why this happens; she just knows that she has a strong dislike (M) of grass. As this woman explores her sensations and images, seeing and smelling cut grass in her mind’s eye, she takes time to explore her bodily sensations in detail. As she does, she has a new sensation of being spun in the air and held at the wrists and legs. Next she gets a tactile image of her bullying brother giving her an airplane spin on the front lawn of her childhood house when she was four or five years old. She feels scared (old A), but as she trembles and breathes, she realizes that she is no longer in danger. She now orients (B) by looking around at the peaceful office and then turning her head toward the open face of her therapist. Feeling intact with this newfound safety, she settles a bit. She experiences a spontaneous breath (new B), feeling secure in her belly (new S) now. Then she notices some tightness around her wrists (old S) and the impulse to pry her wrists loose (new S). Now, she feels a wave of anger (new A) building up inside as she yells “Stop!” using the motor muscles of her vocal cords (new B). She settles again and feels (new I) the tactile pleasure of lying on the soft new-mown grass in the warmth of the springtime sunshine. Fresh grass is no longer associated with unpleasant sensations (old M); green, freshly groomed grass is good, parks are wonderful places and “all is well” (new M). She no longer feels nauseated or anxious again in that situation. The simple example above shows us how the elements of this biological model fit together to create a web of either fixity or flow. In nature, when one feels an internal sensation, frequently an image appears simultaneously or shortly afterward. If a client is bothered by an image, a sensation may accompany it that he is not aware of. When, with the therapist’s guidance, the client becomes conscious of both elements, a behavior, affect or new meaning generally follows.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  You wake up and the air is milky and bright. The room glows with a kind of effervescent contentment, despite the boxes and clothes and dishes. You think to yourself: this is the kind of morning you could get used to. When you turn over, she is staring at you. The luminous innocence of the light curdles in your stomach. You don’t remember ever going from awake to afraid so quickly. “You were moving all night,” she says. “Your arms and elbows touched me. You kept me awake.” If you apologize profusely, go to this page. If you tell her to wake you up next time your elbows touch her in your sleep, go to this page. If you toss back the blankets from your body and hit the floor with both your feet and tear through the house like it’s Pamplona, and when you get to the driveway your car keys are already in your hand and you drive away with a theatrical squeal of the tires, never to return again, go to this page. That’s not how it happened, but okay. We can pretend. I’ll give it to you, just this once. Turn to this page. Dream House as L’appel du Vide In the pit of it, you fantasize about dying. Tripping on a sidewalk and stumbling into the path of an oncoming car. A gas leak silently offing you in your sleep. A machete-wielding madman on public transit. Falling down the stairs, but drunk, so you flop limb over limb like a marionette and feel no pain. Anything to make it stop. You have forgotten that leaving is an option. Dream House as Libretto My middle school music teacher showed a film version of Carmen to the class, the really famous one with Julia Migenes where she keeps hiking up her skirt during the Habanera. He was probably just trying to give you all a bit of culture, but all my classmates took away from the screening and the ensuing discussion was that Carmen was a prostitute who didn’t shave under her arms, and by extension, by thirteen- year-old logic, I must also be a prostitute who doesn’t shave under her arms. They asked me about both of these things over and over again. Already smarting after a decade of Carmen Sandiego jokes, I was ready to abandon my name altogether. When Carmen sings, she tells the men who surround her that love is a fickle thing, and they need to beware. Don José gives himself over to her, loses himself in her. When she leaves at the end, he begs her not to go. She tells him that she was born free and she will die free. Then he stabs her, and she dies. Confessing his crime to the gathering crowd, he throws his body on Carmen’s corpse and howls, “Ah, Carmen! Carmen, my adored one!” As though he hadn’t just killed her with his own hands.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  We endured the afternoon together with Johann Sebastian Bach. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” quoth Congreve (who surely is in heaven playing cards with Mozart). When I think of all the bad times that Bach has helped me get through I’m sure he’s in heaven too. Dr. Steven Pearlmutter walked in at five—all apologies and sweaty palms. From then on our life was in the hands of the doctors and their smug little categories. My husband, Brian, Dr. Pearlmutter assured me, was “a very sick young man.” He was going to “try to help him.” He began by trying to give him a shot of Thorazine—at which point Brian bolted and ran down the back stairs (all thirteen floors) and into Riverside Park. The doctor and I chased him, found him, stopped him, cajoled him, watched him bolt again, chased him again, cajoled him again and so on. The rest of the details are as sordid as they are common. From then on hospitalization became inevitable. Brian was now completely panicked and his delusions became more and more colorful. The days that followed were nightmarish. Brian’s parents flew in from California and promptly declared that Brian was perfectly OK but that I was crazy. They tried to prevent him from taking any medication and they constantly made fun of the doctors (which, admittedly, wasn’t very hard to do). They urged him to leave me and come home to California—as if being away from me would automatically make him all better. Dr. Pearlmutter had referred Brian to a psychiatrist who tried for five gallant days to keep him out of the hospital. It was no use. Between Brian’s mother and father, Brian’s boss, the Miracle Foam people, Brian’s well-meaning former professors and the doctors, our lives were no longer our own. Brian was hounded by his would-be caretakers and each day he flipped out more. On the fifth morning after Dr. Pearlmutter’s visit, Brian took all his clothes off near Belvedere Tower in Central Park. Then he tried to climb on King Jagiello’s bronze horse along with bronze King Jagiello (crossed swords and all). The police finally took him to the psycho ward at Mount Sinai (sirens screaming, Thorazine flowing like wine), and except for a few weekend passes, we never lived together again. It took another eight months or so for our marriage to sputter out completely. After Brian got to Mount Sinai, his parents moved in with me, denounced me day and night, went to the hospital with me every evening, and never allowed us more than ten minutes alone together. Visiting hour was only from six to seven anyway, and they were determined to keep us apart even then. Besides, when I was alone with Brian, all he did was attack me. I was a Judas, he said. How could I have locked him up?

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  me, with lifting + my head if I would: not anything, but bowing it if I would; and if I did lack drink, I should look still upon the minister of drink, winking first with one eye and then with the other. All which things I did willingly bring to pass, and obeyed his doctrine; howbeit I could have done all these things without his teaching, but I feared greatly lest in shewing myself cunning to do all like a man, without a.master, I. should portend some great and. strange wonder, and. as a prodigy thereby be slain and thrown out to wild vultures. But my fame was spread about in every place, and the qualities which I could do, in so much that my master was renowned throughout all: the country by reason of me. For every man would: say: “Behold the gentleman that hath an ass that will eat and drink with him, an. ass that will box, an ass that will dance, an. ass that understandeth what is said to him and will shew. his fantasy by signs." But first I will tell you (which I should have done before) who my master was, and. of what country. His name was Thiasus; he was born at Corinth, which. is the principal town of all the province of Achaea; he had. passed all offices of honour in. due course according as his birth and dignity required, and he should now take upon him the degree Quin- quennial?: and now to shew his worthiness to enter upon that office, and to purchase the benevolence of every person, he appointed and promised publie joys and. triumphs of gladiators, to endure the space of three days. To bring his endeavour for the publie i The single toss of the head backwards, which is still the regular gesture of refusal in Italy. 2 The quinquennial magistracy, or chief office of provincial towns. 505 19 LUCIUS APULEIUS studio tune Thessaliam etiam accesserat, nobilis- simas feras et famosos inde gladiatores comparaturus, iamque ex arbitrio dispositis coemptisque omnibus domuitionem parabat. Spretis luculentis illis suis vehi- culis ac posthabitis decoris raedarum carpentis, quae partim contecta, partim revelata, frustra novissimis trahebantur consequiis, equis etiam Thessalicis et aliis iumentis Gallicanis quibus generosa suboles perhibet pretiosam dignitatem, me phaleris aureis et fucatis ephippiis et purpureis tapetis et frenis argenteis et pictilibus balteis et tintinnabulis perargutis exor- natum ipse residens amantissime nonnunquam comis- simis affatur sermonibus, atque inter alia pleraque summe se delectari profitebatur quod haberet in me simul et convivam et vectorem. At ubi partimterrestri, partim maritimo itinere confecto Corinthum accessi- mus, magnae civium turbae confluebant, ut mihi vide- batur, non tantum Thiasi dantes honori quam mei con- spectus cupientes: nam tanta etiam ibidem de me fama pervaserat, ut non mediocri quaestui praeposito ilii meo fuerim. Qui cum multos videret nimio favore lusus meos spectare gestientes, obserata fore atque singulis eorum seorsus admissis, stipes ac- ceptans non parvas summulas diurnas corradere consuerat.