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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Luther was brought up in all the mediaeval superstitious concerning demons, ghosts, witches, and sorcerers. His imagination clothed ideas in concrete, massive forms. The Devil was to him the personal embodiment of all evil and mischief in the world. Hence he figures very largely in his theology and religious experience.418 He is the direct antipode of God, and the archfiend of Christ and of men. As God is pure love, so the Devil is pure selfishness, hatred, and envy. He is endowed with high intellectual gifts, as bad men often surpass good men in prudence and understanding. He was originally an archangel, but moved by pride and envy against the Son of God, whose incarnation and saving work he foresaw, he rose in rebellion against it. He commands an organized army of fallen angels and bad men in constant conflict with God and the good angels. He is the god of this world, and knows how to rule it. He has power over nature, and can make thunder and lightning, hail and earthquake, fleas and bed-bugs. He is the ape of God. He can imitate Christ, and is most dangerous in the garb of an angel of light. He is most busy where the Word of God is preached. He is proud and haughty, although he can appear most humble. He is a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He understands a thousand arts. He hates men because they are creatures of God. He is everywhere around them, and tries to hurt and seduce them. He kindles strife and enmity. He is the author of all heresies and persecutions. He invented popery, as a counterpart of the true kingdom of God. He inflicts trials, sickness, and death upon individuals. He tempts them to break the Ten Commandments, to doubt God’s word, and to blaspheme. He leads into infidelity and despair. He hates matrimony, mirth, and music. He can not bear singing, least of all "spiritual songs."419 He holds the human will captive, and rides it as his donkey. He can quote Scripture, but only as much of it as suits his purpose. A Christian should know that the Devil is nearer him than his coat or shirt, yea, than his own skin. Luther reports that he often disputed with the Devil in the night, about the state of his soul, so earnestly that he himself perspired profusely, and trembled. Once the Devil told him that he was a great sinner. "I knew that long ago," replied Luther, "tell me something new. Christ has taken my sins upon himself, and forgiven them long ago. Now grind your teeth." At other times he returned the charge and tauntingly asked him, "Holy Satan, pray for me," or "Physician, cure thyself." The Devil assumes visible forms, and appears as a dog or a hog or a goat, or as a flame or star, or as a man with horns. He is noisy and boisterous.420 He is at the bottom of all witchcraft and ghost-trickery. He steals little children and substitutes others in their place, who are mere lumps of flesh and torment the parents, but die young.421 Luther was disposed to trace many mediaeval miracles of the Roman Catholic Church to the agency of Satan. He believed in daemones incubos et succubos.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And so saying, they seized him and dragged him away; then they took him by the hair, tore every stitch of clothing from his back, and started to punch and to kick him. In fact, everybody within sight was bearing down upon him, or so it seemed to Martellino. ‘Mercy, for the love of God!’ he cried, defending himself as best he could. But it was of no use, for more and more people were piling on top of him every minute. When Marchese and Stecchi saw what was happening, they began to have serious misgivings. Fearing for their own safety, they dared not go to Martellino’s assistance, but on the contrary they yelled ‘Kill him!’ as loudly as anybody else, at the same time trying to devise some way of rescuing him from the hands of the mob. And he would certainly have been killed but for a quick piece of thinking on the part of Marchese, who made his way as swiftly as possible to the captain in charge of the watch, drawn up in strength outside the church, and said to him: ‘For God’s sake, come quickly! There’s a villain over here who has cut my purse, and robbed me of a hundred gold florins at the very least. Arrest him! Please don’t let him run off with my money!’ On hearing this, a dozen or more of the officers rushed over to the place where poor Martellino was having his brains beaten out, and after forcing their way through the crowd with enormous difficulty, they removed him all bruised and battered from their clutches, and hauled him off to the magistrate’s palace. A number of people followed him all the way, still angry with him for hoodwinking them, and when they heard he had been arrested as a cutpurse, they too began to claim that he had stolen their purses, thinking this as fair a way as any of making life unpleasant for him. The magistrate, who was of a harsh disposition, no sooner heard these accusations than he took him aside and began to interrogate him on the matter. But Martellino gave him facetious answers, as though quite unconcerned at his arrest. This upset the judge, who had him fastened to the strappado, and ordered him to be given a series of good hard blows, with the intention of extracting a confession from him before having him hanged. When they let him down, and the judge asked him whether the accusations brought against him were true, he replied, since a straight denial would have been useless: ‘Sir, I am ready to confess the truth. But make each of my accusers say when and where I cut his purse, and I will tell you whether or not I did it.’

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The body of misinformation about trauma, its treatment, and a traumatized person’s prospects for recovery is astounding. Even many professionals who specialize in trauma don’t understand it. Inevitably, misinformation leads to anxiety and more suffering. A Traumatized Person's Reality All of us have had experiences that lose something in the telling. Shrugging it off, we say, “You had to be there.” Trauma is such an experience. Words can’t accurately convey the anguish that a traumatized person experiences. It has an intensity that defies description. Many traumatized people feel that they live in a personal hell in which no other human could possibly share. While this is not entirely true, elements of this perception are accurate. Here is a condensation of what severely traumatized individuals struggle with: I don’t know of one thing I don’t fear. I fear getting out of bed in the morning. I fear walking out of my house. I have great fears of deat h… not that I will die someday, but that I am going to die within the next few minutes. I fear ange r… my own and everyone else’s, even when anger is not present. I fear rejection and/or abandonment. I fear success and failure. I get pain in my chest, and tingling and numbness in my arms and legs every day. I almost daily experience cramps ranging from menstrual-type cramps to intense pain. I just really hurt most of the time. I feel that I can’t go on. I have headaches. I feel nervous all the time. I have shortness of breath, racing heart, disorientation, and panic. I’m always cold, and I have dry mouth. I have trouble swallowing. I have no energy or motivation, and when I do accomplish something, I feel no sense of satisfaction. I feel overwhelmed, confused, lost, helpless, and hopeless daily. I have uncontrollable outbursts of rage and depression. Get On with Your Life If it hurts, hide it. — Michael Martin Murphy from Cowboy Logic Because the symptoms and emotions associated with trauma can be extreme, most of us (and those close to us) will recoil and attempt to repress these intense reactions. Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation. Denial is so common in our culture that it has become a cliché. How often have you heard these words? “Pull yourself together, its over now. You should forget about it. Grin and bear it. It’s time to get on with your life.” Who Is Traumatized? Our ability to respond appropriately when faced with danger and threat is determined by a number of different factors:

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I was dying even as I was being born. This continues to be a theme in my life, this struggle with transitions: between night and day, here and there, desert and water, earth and sky, and beginnings and endings. As I was being born, I had the same dying, gulping breaths as my father’s last breaths when he died several years later, in a small Texas town near the water. We are linked by water and fire. My father and I surfaced in an ancient memory once when I was in my thirties. We lived by the water near a volcano. We who lived there had a long relationship with the spirit of the volcano. Our behavior broke the trust. We littered the land with trash and discord. We forgot to acknowledge the gifts. The volcano mountain blew with a terrible pressure. The earth rocked and fell open. Lava the color of fiery blood streamed toward us. Fire and ash rained down. We panicked for air. The man who was now my father and I stumbled to the sea with our lungs on fire. I was his companion, friend, not the daughter I was to be in this life, this story. Many others rushed toward the sea to get away from the raining fire. We fell into a boat docked near shore, as did many others, more than the boat could carry. We attempted to move away from the falling ash, into the ocean, which was moving oddly in the disturbance. Hundreds were jumping into the water, clinging to the boat. I lost earth consciousness. One version of the Mvskoke creation story begins with a volcano. It marked our journey from a place in the west. Sam Proctor, the helis heya or medicine maker of my tribal town, told me that in that time seven Hawaiian canoes came to shore. Those people became part of us. We walked east to more stable lands. A compassionate fire appeared before us to guide us. We made it to what is now known as the southeastern part of the United States. Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts. My guardian remains, and reminds me of those older generations of Creek people who stayed close to the teachings, like my cousin John Jacobs of Holdenville, my beloved aunt Lois Harjo Ball, and George and Stella Coser, Sr. They speak softly, with kindness. They are quick with humor, and keep an open path. They have been tested with suffering and have responded with wisdom rather than bitterness. They teach by story, images, and songs. And they are respectful to mystery. They continue to remind me that it is best to walk this earthly path with vnektckv , compassion. All I have to do is remember them, and they stand in memory in a kind light.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At the earnest solicitation of the papal nuncio, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, and the Dukes William and Louis of Bavaria, together with twelve bishops of South Germany, concluded at Ratisbon, July 6, 1524, a league for the protection of the Roman faith against the Reformation, with the exception of the abolition of some glaring abuses which did not touch doctrines.501 The Emperor lent it his influence by issuing a stringent edict (July 27, 1524). This was an ominous event. The Romish league called forth a Protestant counter-league of Philip of Hesse and John of Saxony, at Torgau in June, 1526, although against the advice of the Wittenberg Reformers, who feared more evil than good from a union of politics with religion and trusted to the power of the Word of God without any carnal weapons. Thus the German nation was divided into two hostile camps. From this unhappy division arose the political weakness of the empire, and the terrible calamities of the Smalkaldian and the Thirty Years’ Wars. In 1525 the Peasants’ War broke out, and gave new strength to the reaction, but only for a short time. § 70. Luther and Henry VIII Henricus VIII.: Adsertio VII. Sacram. adv. Luth. Lond. 1521. A German translation by Frick, 1522, in Walch, XIX., 158 sqq. Lutherus: Contra Henricum Regem. 1522. Also freely reproduced in German by Luther. His letter to Henry, Sept. 1, 1525. Auf des Königs in England Lästerschrift M. Luther’s Antwort. 1527. Afterwards also in Latin. See the documents in Walch, XIX. 153–521; Erl. ed., XXVIII. 343 sqq.; XXX. 1–14. Comp. also Luther’s letters of Feb. 4 and March 11, 1527, in De Wette III. 161 and 163. With all his opposition to Ultra-Protestantism in church and state, Luther did not mean to yield an inch to the Romanists. This appears from two very personal controversies which took place during these disturbances,—the one with Henry VIII. concerning the sacraments; the other with Erasmus about predestination and free-will. In both he forgot the admirable lessons of moderation which he had enjoined from the pulpit in Wittenberg. He used again the club of Hercules. Henry VIII. of England urged Charles V. to exterminate the Lutheran heresy by force, and wrote in 1521 (probably with the assistance of his chaplain, Edward Lee), a scholastic defence of the seven sacraments, against Luther’s "Babylonish Captivity." He dedicated the book to Pope Leo X. He treated the Reformer with the utmost contempt, as a blasphemer and servant of Satan. He used the old weapons of church authority against freedom. He adhered to the dogma of transubstantiation, even after his breach with Rome. Pope Clement VII. judged that this book was written with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and promised indulgence to all who read it. At the same time he gratified the ambition of the vain king by confirming the title "Defender of the Faith," which Leo had already conferred upon him.502

• From Trash (1988)

  Those wide blank eyes looked back at me. I could see myself in the black centers, my hair wild and uncombed around my face, my own eyes as wide as the monkey’s, as blank, the pupils as black and empty as night. My mouth worked, and in the blackness I saw my own teeth—clenching, shining, grinding. My teeth scared me right down into my soul. I stole all the dimes from the petty cash drawer and called Toni from the pay phone in the dorm. She listened to me babble and made soft soothing noises into my ears. “It’s all right, baby. I understand. Don’t none of us want to be too alone if we can help it, now and then.” I put the phone tight to my teeth and sobbed until she yelled to make me stop. “If now and then is all you got to offer, then we’ll see about now and then.” The last Sunday before we all went away for the summer, Toni borrowed a few hours’ time from a friend with an apartment in town. I’d quit my job in the lab and taken another in the post office, signed up for computer class, and was trying to stop dreaming about plush-faced monkeys and wild red rats. Toni and I made love until we were too sore to move and then lay naked, sweating into each other’s hips. Toni held my hands, fingering the two scars that remained on my right little finger. After a few minutes she sucked my fingers into her mouth and bit down gently. “Tell me about that fishing camp again.” I could barely understand her, and didn’t want to talk anyway. “No.” “That monkey left her mark on you, didn’t she?” “Only one that ever did.” I looked into her eyes when I said it, knowing what I was saying as much as she did. “Only one, huh? You think that’s just?” I shrugged, my eyes never leaving hers. “There is no justice,” I told her, meaning it, meaning it absolutely. Toni sighed and rolled over. She took a long pull from the half-empty glass of beer she’d left on the floor, and then looked up at me from under her eyebrows. “Tell you what,” she whispered. “I want you to put me in one of your stories sometime.” I took the glass away from her, took a drink myself. “What in the world for?” She took the glass back and turned away from me. “I want to be there,” she said over her shoulder. “I just want to be there, right in there with the monkeys. Me, you understand—raw and drunk and hairy. Me, the way I am. You put me in there, huh? You just put me in there.” Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know

• From Trash (1988)

  But a night finally came when I woke up sweaty and angry and afraid I’d never go back to sleep again. All those stories were rising up my throat. Voices were echoing in my neck, laughter behind my ears, and I was terribly terribly afraid that I was finally as crazy as my kind was supposed to be. But the desire to live was desperate in my belly, and the stories I had hidden all those years were the blood and bone of it. To get it down, to tell it again, to make something—by God just once—to be real in the world, without lies or evasions or sweet-talking nonsense. I got up and wrote a story all the way through. It was one of the stories from the yellow pages, one of the ones I had rewritten, but it was different again. It wasn’t truly me or my mama or my girlfriends, or really any of the people who’d been there, but it had the feel, the shit-kicking anger and grief of my life. It wasn’t that whiny voice, but it had the drawl, and it had, too, the joy and pride I sometimes felt in me and mine. It was not biography and yet not lies, and it resonated to the pulse of my sisters’ fear and my desperate shame, and it ended with all the questions and decisions still waiting—most of all the decision to live. It was a rough beginning—my own shout of life against death, of shape and substance against silence and confusion. It was most of all my deep abiding desire to live fleshed and strengthened on the page, a way to tell the truth as a kind of magic not cheapened or distorted by a need to please any damn body at all. Without it, I cannot imagine my own life. Without it, I have no way to know who I am. One time, twice, once in a while again, I get it right. Once in a while, I can make the world I know real on the page. I can make the women and men I love breathe out loud in an empty room, the dreams I dare not speak shape up in the smoky darkness of other people’s imaginations. Writing these stories is the only way I know to make sure of my ongoing decision to live, to set moment to moment a small piece of stubbornness against an ocean of ignorance and obliteration. I write stories. I write fiction. I put on the page a third look at what I’ve seen in life—the condensed and reinvented experience of a cross-eyed, working-class lesbian, addicted to violence, language, and hope, who has made the decision to live, is determined to live, on the page and on the street, for me and mine. River of Names

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I tried to ignore them and kept shooting the solid balls into the pockets of the pool table, just as I had ignored my father when he and his friends partied, argued, and played. I knew the routine. There was a high, and then there was a low. Every tiny hair on the back of my neck went on alert when I heard his voice yelling above the crowd, “Fuck you!” We all ran in from the pool tables to see what was the matter. He aimed a pitcher of beer at the bartender; it missed and smashed into the bar mirror with a terrible crash. We all scattered as the bartender called the police. The poet refused to go; instead he decided to climb the fence to the roof of the bar. I tried to stop him. He climbed to the roof and jumped, then stood up, unhurt, like a defiant child, and walked away, the sound of approaching sirens growing loud and shrill. I should have left him then. Instead I caught a ride back with friends who tried to convince me to leave him. “No, I want to get the sad goodbye over with,” I told them. They convinced me to stay the night with one of them and go back in the morning. The next day, when I opened the door, all the lights in the house were on, the stereo was playing Kris Kristofferson, “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and all the burners were on full blast, filling the house with gas. He was passed out on the couch with an unlit cigarette and matches in his hands from starting to make breakfast. Later he apologized profusely. This will never happen again, he promised. He made us his specialty breakfast: chorizo and eggs. He came back from the 7-Eleven with a newspaper and a bouquet of wilted flowers. I told him to pack his bags and get out. “No,” he said. “We can’t work politically for a better world for the people if we can’t hold it together in our own house.” I convinced myself that we owed it to ourselves to keep trying. I found excuses: He had been overcome with grief for his buddy. He was an Indian man in a white world. And most of the time he wasn’t like that, I reasoned. I stayed with him. He planted a garden with my son in the small yard behind the apartment. He wrote beautiful poetry to me. He loved me. “So did your father,” one of my friends reminded me. “You’ve gone and married your father.” I didn’t want to hear it, and felt even more alone in the path I had chosen. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] That night as we walked home from the bar and I waited for him behind the motel, he seemed to take forever.

• From Trash (1988)

  Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anyone what is really going on. We are not safe, I learned from my mama. There are people in the world who are, but they are not us. Don’t show your stuff to anyone. Tell no one that your stepfather beats you. The things that would happen are too terrible to name. Mama quit working honkytonks to try the mill as soon as she could after her marriage. But a year in the mill was all she could take; the dust in the air got to her too fast. After that there was no choice but to find work in a diner. The tips made all the difference, though she could have made more money if she’d stayed with the honkytonks or managed a slot as a cocktail waitress. There was always more money serving people beer and wine, more still in hard liquor, but she’d have had to go outside Greenville County to do that. Neither she nor her new husband could imagine going that far. The diner was a good choice anyway, one of the few respectable ones downtown, a place where men took their families on Sunday afternoon. The work left her tired, but not sick to death like the mill, and she liked the people she met there, the tips and the conversation. “You got a way about you,” the manager told her. “Oh yeah, I’m known for my ways,” she laughed, and no one would have known she didn’t mean it. Truckers or judges, they all liked my mama. And when they weren’t slipping quarters in her pocket, they were bringing her things, souvenirs or friendship cards, once or twice a ring. Mama smiled, joked, slapped ass, and firmly passed back anything that looked like a down payment on something she didn’t want to sell. She started taking me to work with her when I was still too short to see over the counter, letting me sit up there to watch her some, and tucking me away in the car when I got cold or sleepy. “That’s my girl,” she’d brag. “Four years old and reads the funny papers to me every Sunday morning. She’s something, an’t she?” “Something.” The men would nod, mostly not even looking at me, but agreeing with anything just to win Mama’s smile. I’d watch them closely, the wallets they pulled out of their back pockets, the rough patches on their forearms and scratches on their chins. Poor men, they didn’t have much more than we did, but they could buy my mama’s time with a cup of coffee and a nickel slipped under the saucer. I hated them, each and every one.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He had got his knock-out in 1918. The bullet had grazed the optic nerve. At first he had gone to a base hospital, but as soon as he could he had come to Paris to be treated by a very celebrated man. He had been in danger of losing the sight of the right eye; it had scared him to death, he told them. But after three months he had had to go home; things had gone wrong on some of his farms owing to the mismanagement of a bailiff. The oculist had warned him that the trouble might recur, that he ought to have remained under observation. Well, it had recurred about four months ago. He had got the wind up and rushed back to Paris. For three weeks he had lain in a darkened room, not daring to think of the possible verdict. Eyes were so tiresomely sympathetic: if the one went the other might easily follow. But, thank God, it had proved to be less serious than the oculist had feared. His sight was saved, but he had to go slow, and was still under treatment. The eye would have to be watched for some time; so here he was with Aunt Sarah at Passy. ‘You must see my Aunt Sarah, you two; she’s a darling. She’s my father’s sister. I know you’ll like her. She’s become very French since her second marriage, a little too Faubourg St. Germain perhaps, but so kind—I want you to meet her at once. She’s quite a well-known hostess at Passy.’ They talked on until well after twelve o’clock—very happy they were together that evening, and he left with a promise to ring them up on the following morning about lunch with Aunt Sarah. ‘Well,’ said Stephen, ‘what do you think of my friend?’ ‘I think he’s most awfully nice,’ said Mary. 3Aunt Sarah lived in the palatial house that a grateful second husband had left her. For years she had borne with his peccadilloes, keeping her temper and making no scandal. The result was that everything he possessed apart from what had gone to her stepson—and the Comte de Mirac had been very wealthy—had found its way to the patient Aunt Sarah. She was one of those survivals who look upon men as a race of especially privileged beings. Her judgment of women was more severe, influenced no doubt by the ancien régime, for now she was even more French than the French whose language she spoke like a born Parisian.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  fire is prepared for sinners," because "the Lord openly affirms, and the other Scriptures prove" it.1148 Hippolytus approves the eschatology of the Pharisees as regards the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, the judgment and conflagration, everlasting life and "everlasting punishment;" and in another place be speaks of "the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the radiating voice of the Word."1149 According to Tertullian the future punishment "will continue, not for a long time, but forever."1150 It does credit to his feelings when he says that no innocent man can rejoice in the punishment of the guilty, however just, but will grieve rather. Cyprian thinks that the fear of hell is the only ground of the fear of death to any one, and that we should have before our eyes the fear of God and eternal punishment much more than the fear of men and brief suffering.1151 The generality of this belief among Christians is testified by Celsus, who tells them that the heathen priests threaten the same "eternal punishment" as they, and that the only question was which was right, since both claimed the truth with equal confidence.1152 II. The final Annihilation of the wicked removes all discord from the universe of God at the expense of the natural immortality of the soul, and on the ground that sin will ultimately destroy the sinner, and thus destroy itself. This theory is attributed to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, who believed only in a conditional immortality which may be forfeited; but, as we have just seen, their utterances in favor of eternal punishment are too clear and strong to justify the inference which they might have drawn from their psychology. Arnobius, however, seems to have believed in actual annihilation; for he speaks of certain souls that "are engulfed and burned up," or "hurled down and having been reduced to nothing, vanish in the frustration of a perpetual destruction."1153 III. The Apokatastasis or final restoration of all rational beings to holiness and happiness. This seems to be the most satisfactory speculative solution of the problem of sin, and secures perfect harmony in the creation, but does violence to freedom with its power to perpetuate resistance, and Ignores the hardening nature of sin and the ever increasing difficulty of repentance. If conversion and salvation are an ultimate necessity, they lose their moral character, and moral aim. Origen was the first Christian Universalist.

• From Trash (1988)

  Days, I went to training sessions, memorized codes, section numbers, and memo formats. Nights, I wrote my stories. I would pull out scraps of paper at work to make notes about things I wanted to write about, though most of those scraps just wound up tucked in my yellow pad. What poured out of me could not be planned or controlled; it came up like water under pressure at its own pace, pushing my fear ahead of it. By the end of the month, I’d taken to sitting on the motel roof—no longer stoned, but still writing. By then I was also writing letters to all the women I really didn’t expect to see again, explaining the things that writing my stories had made real to me. I did not intend to mail those letters, and never did. The letters themselves were stories—mostly lies—self-justifying, awkward, and desperate. I finished that month, got assigned to a distant city, put away my yellow papers, and moved—making sure no one who knew me from before could find me. I threw myself into the women’s community, fell in love every third day, and started trying to be serious about writing—poems and essays and the beginnings of stories. I even helped edit a feminist magazine. Throughout that time I told stories—mostly true stories about myself and my family and my lovers in a drawl that made them all funnier than they were. Though that was mostly a good time for me, I wrote nothing that struck me as worth the trouble of actually keeping. I did not tuck those new stories away with the yellow pads I had sealed up in a blanket box of my mother’s. I told myself the yellow pages were as raw and unworked as I felt myself to be, and the funny stories I was telling people were better, were the work of someone who was going to be a “real” writer. It was three years before I pulled out those old yellow sheets and read them, and saw how thin and self-serving my funny stories had become.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Their discreet steward had meanwhile made up several beds in different parts of the little valley, surrounding them with drapes of French cretonne and bedecking them with canopies, and the king gave leave to those who so desired to retire for their siesta; and those who had no desire to sleep were free to amuse themselves to their hearts’ content in the various ways to which they were accustomed. In due course, when the time came for them to address themselves once more to their story telling, they all got up and proceeded to seat themselves on rugs which, in accordance with the king’s instructions, had been laid upon the grass beside the lake, in a spot not far away from where they had breakfasted. Then the king ordered Emilia to open the proceedings, and with a broad smile, she gaily began to speak, as follows: FIRST STORYGianni Lotteringhi hears a tapping at his door in the night; he awakens his wife, and she leads him to believe it is a werewolf, whereupon they go and exorcize it with a prayer, and the knocking stops. My lord, I should have counted myself very fortunate if you had chosen some person other than myself to introduce so splendid a topic as the one on which we are called upon to speak; but since you desire me to set a reassuring example to the other ladies, I shall willingly do so. I shall endeavour, dearest ladies, to say something that might prove useful to you in the future, for if other women are no different from myself, we are easily frightened, and in particular by werewolves.1 Heaven knows that I am unable to explain what these creatures might be, nor have I ever found any woman who could, but we are frightened of them just the same. However, if you should ever encounter one, you will henceforth be able to drive it away, for by listening carefully to my story you will learn a fine and godly prayer which is tailored to the purpose. There once lived in Florence, in the quarter of San Pancrazio,2 a master-weaver whose name was Gianni Lotteringhi, a man more successful in his calling than sensible in other matters, for although he was a simple sort of fellow, he was regularly elected as the leader of the laud-singers at Santa Maria Novella, and had to conduct their rehearsals, and he was often given other such trifling little duties, so that all in all he had a mighty high opinion of himself; yet the only reason these functions were entrusted to him was that, being comfortably off, he frequently used to supply the friars with a good meal.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  How I wished that was truly what I was doing. My friend’s boyfriend, who had been kicked out of high school, was waiting for us up the street in his busted-up car. We jumped in. A pair of fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror. I’d never been in a car with fuzzy dice. No good can come from this, warned my knowing. What does it matter if you lose face now by backing out? Ask them to drop you off. Now. I was still angry at my stepfather, and at my mother for supporting him. Whatever happened, she took his side. She didn’t want to see what was really going on. What good was it to know anything anyway? I argued at the knowing. The more you knew, the more you endured. My classmate pulled out beers hidden under her jacket. We drank. Her older, slick-haired boyfriend drove us farther and farther out from the city, beyond my circle of familiarity. The beer calmed my anxiety. Soon we were at the lake, at a huge party. The music pounded. Drunken strangers, mostly guys, surrounded me. I wanted to go home, but I didn’t want to go home at all. Hell, I reminded myself, I had no home. So I drank. The prickling anxiety that constantly haunted me in my waking moments slid to my feet. The more I drank, the more I didn’t care that I couldn’t sing in the house anymore or try out for the play. I drank more to fly above the rude story. I drank to obliterate my life. My classmate and her boyfriend disappeared. They left me alone without a ride home. I panicked. I had to find a way back by my stepfather’s curfew. If I were to show up late and drunk, I feared I could be beaten to death. I found a ride and paid for it without money. I had nothing else, and I was desperate and out-of-my-mind drunk. I left part of myself behind. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] After that, I drank intermittently, usually on weekends. I discovered that each kind of alcohol has its own spirit. Drinking the sticky-sweet Southern Comfort associated with the singer Janis Joplin evoked violence. The whiskey was born in a New Orleans bar in 1874, in the wake of my people’s removal. After I pulled down the front door of my apartment in my very early twenties, in a frustrated anger born of drinking Southern Comfort, I never drank it again. Tequila was closer to its plant origins. I could see the agave plant at the edge of my consciousness. It was a medicine. I sensed the plant as a mothering being. It would bend over me to take care of me even as it would punish me, like a fierce, protective mother. All of these plant medicines, like whiskey, tequila, and tobacco, are potent healers. There’s a reason they’re called spirits. You must use them very carefully.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Furious, she called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who in turn alerted Kenyon’s probation officer, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. “Ken discovered he’d bit into the wrong bone this time,” Lena says. Upon learning he was wanted by the law again, Kenyon fled south with Gwendolyn and their kids to his old hideaway, Colonia LeBaron. Back in Mexico, Kenyon married a third wife, who happened to be Gwendolyn’s half sister. He departed Colonia LeBaron soon thereafter with both wives and all their children, and lit out across Central America. Over the years that followed he had four more children with each wife. He supported all these dependents, after a fashion, by doing odd jobs, selling natural foods, working as a massage therapist, and running petty scams. “He got money lots of different ways,” says Evangeline Blackmore, the oldest of the kids Ken had with Gwendolyn. Now a tall, blond, exotic-looking eighteen-year-old who speaks English with a trace of a Mexican accent, Evangeline explains that Kenyon “would buy and sell gold once in a while. When we were in Mexico he made saddles and other leather goods for Mexican cowboys. But mostly he would con people. My dad is a very good con artist.” Kenyon Blackmore had always subscribed to weird religious views, but they became notably more extreme after his release from prison, when he disappeared into the shadows of Central America with his two LeBaron wives. “The LeBarons seemed to encourage Dad’s strange beliefs,” says Lena. “They were convinced he possessed God-like qualities. They would feed his fantasy, and he would feed theirs.” As he dragged his young wives and their pack of semiferal children back and forth across Central America, Kenyon received a series of revelations in which God told him that he was “the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ.” God told him, in fact, that Jesus would come back to earth in the form of a child born of Kenyon’s pure seed and his daughter’s virgin womb. Heeding the Lord’s commandment, in June 1996, on Evangeline’s twelfth birthday, he took her as his wife—that is to say, he began raping her on a regular basis. According to Evangeline, her father believed that he should start having sexual intercourse with her when she turned twelve “because this is when Mary, the first mother of Jesus, was impregnated.” Kenyon was convinced, she says, that “nobody else’s blood was good enough” to sire the Son of Man. When Kenyon forced himself on Evangeline, she remembers him telling her that “I was going to hell because I wasn’t being submissive.” As she continued to resist, “he would throw me on the ground, punch me, and cover my mouth when I would try and scream.” Eventually, to keep from being beaten, she started yielding passively to her sixty-year-old father’s incestuous assaults. “I was barely twelve years old,” Evangeline states with astounding composure.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The servant did as he was bidden, and the maid, having seized the clothes from his hands, and recognized them, turned pale with terror, strongly suspecting, in view of what she had been told, that they had murdered her. Scarcely able to prevent herself from screaming, she burst into tears, and, the scholar having now departed, she immediately set off at a run towards the tower, with the clothes under her arm. That same afternoon, a swineherd from the lady’s estate had had the misfortune to lose two of his pigs, and, searching all over for them, he arrived at the tower shortly after the scholar had left. Peering into every nook and cranny to see whether his pigs were anywhere to be found, he heard the unfortunate lady’s despairing moans, and climbing as far up the tower as he could, he called out: ‘Who is it that is crying up there?’ Recognizing the swineherd’s voice, the lady called to him by name, and said: ‘Alas! go fetch my maid and tell her to come up here.’ ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed, seeing who it was. ‘How ever did you get up there, ma’am? Your maid has been searching high and low for you the whole day. But who would have thought of looking for you here?’ Seizing the ladder by the two uprights, he set it in the proper position and began to tie on the rungs by means of withies. As he was doing this, the maidservant arrived on the scene, and on entering the tower, no longer able to hold herself in check, she clapped her palms to the sides of her head and cried out: ‘My poor, sweet mistress, where are you?’ On hearing the maidservant’s voice, the lady called to her with all her strength, saying: ‘Here I am, my sister. Up here. Don’t cry, but just bring me my clothes, and quickly.’ No sooner did she hear the voice of her mistress, than her fears were almost entirely dispelled, and climbing the ladder, which by this time was all but repaired, she succeeded with the swineherd’s assistance in reaching the platform, where, finding her mistress lying naked on the floor, utterly broken and exhausted, looking more like a burnt log than a human form, she dug her nails into her face and burst into tears, as though she were gazing down upon a corpse. However, the lady implored her for God’s sake to be silent and help her to dress. And having learnt from the maid that no one knew where she had been, except for the swineherd and those who had brought her clothes, she felt somewhat relieved, and begged them for God’s sake never to breathe a word about it to anyone.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  late afternoon sun. Who was after whom? I wondered. “Lupita, can you move your admiration society outside?” It was Mrs. Wilhelm. I had briefly forgotten about her. She motioned me into her office with her determined German chin and sharp gray eyes. Suddenly I was afraid again. The door shut with a precise click. She motioned me to sit at the table I had shined with lemon wax just that morning. My work detail was to clean her office after breakfast before I went to class. I did so diligently, with respect and fear. “I have something I want to show you,” Mrs. Wilhelm said. Here it is, I thought. I expected her to pull out the weekend’s report on the ditch episode, or at least to point out an uneven wax job. Instead she put a letter in front of me. It was addressed to her, and it was from my stepfather. I had no idea why my stepfather would write to Mrs. Wilhelm or any administrator at the school. I had never seen him write a letter to anyone. His routine was to come in from work at four, find a reason to hit my brothers or me, then open and read the evening paper. My mother would hide in the kitchen cooking dinner, though she was tired after waitressing all day at the diner for the old lady from back East who ran the place. One time I lost it. My mother was exhausted from working a double shift. My stepfather sat in his huge chair barking out orders. He yelled at my mother to cut his meat, to bring him another glass of iced tea. Then he snapped at her because she wasn’t moving fast enough. “Hurry up, bring me some more ice! What’s taking you so long?” He had just asked her for something at the other end of the house a few minutes before. I had to say something. “Why don’t you buy her a pair of roller skates so she can get around faster?” I was belted. I was grounded forever. But it was worth it. The envelope had been opened neatly by Mrs. Wilhelm with the electric letter opener I dusted every morning. I took out the letter. He had used my mother’s drugstore stationery and had written with blue ink.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘And if we return to our homes, what happens? I know not whether your own experience is similar to mine, but my house was once full of servants, and now that there is no one left apart from my maid and myself, I am filled with foreboding and feel as if every hair of my head is standing on end. Wherever I go in the house, wherever I pause to rest, I seem to be haunted by the shades of the departed, whose faces no longer appear as I remember them but with strange and horribly twisted expressions that frighten me out of my senses. ‘Accordingly, whether I am here in church or out in the streets or sitting at home, I always feel ill at ease, the more so because it seems to me that no one possessing private means and a place to retreat to is left here apart from ourselves. But even if such people are still to be found, they draw no distinction, as I have frequently heard and seen for myself, between what is honest and what is dishonest; and provided only that they are prompted by their appetites, they will do whatever affords them the greatest pleasure, whether by day or by night, alone or in company. It is not only of lay people that I speak, but also of those enclosed in monasteries, who, having convinced themselves that such behaviour is suitable for them and is only unbecoming in others, have broken the rules of obedience and given themselves over to carnal pleasures, thereby thinking to escape, and have turned lascivious and dissolute. ‘If this be so (and we plainly perceive that it is), what are we doing here? What are we waiting for? What are we dreaming about? Why do we lag so far behind all the rest of the citizens in providing for our safety? Do we rate ourselves lower than all other women? Or do we suppose that our own lives, unlike those of others, are bound to our bodies by such strong chains that we may ignore all those things which have the power to harm them? In that case we are deluded and mistaken. We have only to recall the names and the condition of the young men and women who have fallen victim to this cruel pestilence, in order to realize clearly the foolishness of such notions.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  patrol surprised us in the nearly moonless night. We scattered across the grounds into the dark to save ourselves from detention, restriction, and being sent back home. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. By the time I made it back to our room, my roommate had already been caught, tried, and judged and was packing her bags to go home. She was the first that semester to be kicked out of school for drinking. She was to be the object lesson for all of us. Her family came after breakfast the next morning, just as a light rain blew in over the mountains. We all watched apprehensively from the dorm living room as her father stiffly lifted her suitcases into their truck to take her back to the reservation. When she climbed in next to her mother and brothers and sisters, she turned and waved a heavy goodbye. That night Georgette Romero woke up the whole dorm. First I heard screams and then footsteps running down the hall toward my room, which was in the farthest wing. Lupita saw everything, she told me later, because she was up writing a letter to her mother at four in the morning. When Georgette ran by, Lupita saw her being chased by a ghost. Her Apache roommates refused to let her back into their room and burned cedar to dispel the evil. They didn’t want a girl with a ghost in their room, and neither did anyone else. My room had an extra bed, and it was decided that she would move to my room. That night and for many nights after, I stayed alert in the dark and didn’t sleep, anticipating the ghost’s return. Georgette’s books were all over the floor. Her plastic beauty case overflowed with makeup and polishes, flooding the counter over the drawers that we were supposed to share. For hours she scraped and rubbed off chipped polish on her nails, then reapplied numerous thick coats, smelling up the room with polish and acetone. She left used dabs of cotton and underwear scattered on the floor. At first I was amused by this alien creature, and told myself that she had made herself her own canvas. But she was getting on my nerves. I spent more and more time in the painting studio or sat on the fire escape, listening to music. One afternoon when I came back to my room from classes, I couldn’t hear anything for the whine blasting from Georgette’s favorite country station. I had just been summoned to meet with the head dorm matron, Mrs. Wilhelm,

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Ah, what a terrible fate! What am I to do? How am I to produce this infant? Where will it come out? This woman’s going to be the death of me now, with her insatiable lust, I can see that. May God make her as miserable as I desire to be happy. I swear that if I were fit and strong, which is far from being the case, I should get up from this bed and break every bone in her body. It serves me right, though; I should never have allowed her to lie on top: but if I ever get out of this alive, she certainly won’t do it again, even if she’s dying of frustration.’ Bruno and Buffalmacco and Nello were so vastly amused by Calandrino’s outburst that it was all they could do to keep a straight face, although Master Simone guffawed so heartily that all his teeth could have been pulled out one after another. At length, however, on being urged and entreated by Calandrino for advice and assistance, the doctor said: ‘Now there’s no cause for alarm, Calandrino. By the grace of God we’ve diagnosed the trouble early enough for me to cure you quite easily in a matter of a few days. But it’s going to cost you a pretty penny.’ ‘Get on with it then, doctor, for the love of God,’ said Calandrino. ‘I have two hundred pounds here with which I was going to buy a farm, but you can take the whole lot if necessary, provided I don’t have to bear this child. I simply don’t know how I could manage it, when I think of the great hullabaloo women make when they are having babies, even though they have plenty of room for the purpose. If I had all that pain to contend with, I honestly think I should die before I ever produced any child.’ ‘Just leave everything to me,’ said the doctor. ‘I shall prescribe a certain medicine for you, a distilled liquid that is most effective in cases of this sort, and highly agreeable to the palate, which will clear everything up in three days and leave you feeling fit as a fiddle. But in future you must be more sensible and desist from these foolish antics. Now in order to prepare this medicine, we shall need three brace of good fat capons, and you must give five pounds in small change to Bruno and the others, so that they can purchase the remaining ingredients we require. See that everything is brought round to my surgery, and tomorrow morning I shall send you the distilled beverage, which you are to start drinking at once, a good big glassful at a time.’ ‘Whatever you say, doctor,’ said Calandrino. And handing over five pounds to Bruno, together with the money for the three brace of capons, he asked him to purchase the things he needed, apologizing for putting him to so much trouble.