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 I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  This is when we react to threats by being overly people-pleasing or helpful as a way to defuse attacks. In his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving , Walker writes: “Traumatized children often over-gravitate to one of these response patterns to survive, and as time passes these four modes become elaborated into entrenched defensive structures . . .” Whatever our go-to response, the million-dollar questions is this: How do we get unstuck? Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, a “body first” approach to healing, teaches that trauma requires us to learn how to discharge the stored energy from our trauma responses in order to restore our nervous systems and return to a sense of safety. He was inspired to study stress on the animal nervous system when he realized that animals are constantly under threat of death yet show no symptoms of trauma. In order to return to homeostasis, animals in the wild release survival energy by shaking, trembling, yawning, breathing deeply, moaning, and so forth. This allows them to turn off the threat response by completely cycling through the experience. Whether we realize it or not, humans have this capacity, too. We can learn to actively engage in behaviors that support trauma and stress release. For example, shaking your whole body as a yogic practice has been around for centuries. Studies have shown that chanting “om” stimulates the vagus nerve, which sends the signal that a threat is no longer active. We’ll dive into other methods in the “Caring for . . .” section below, but the point is, you can learn to silence the alarm bells and calm your system. And here’s why this is important: our nervous systems don’t forget. If our threat response is left perpetually firing, it creates both physical and psychological problems, including severe dysregulation and even dissociation. When Dad was dying, it felt like he was abandoning me. Even though I knew that wasn’t true, my body didn’t. So it’s no surprise that it kicked up my own PTSD from the lack of relationship I had with BD, as well as my cancer diagnosis. No wonder my body felt like it was falling apart. Try as I might, my go-to tools to keep my shit together were failing. At some point, even my wellness practices started to feel like I was just leaning on hollow platitudes to cover up the depths of fear and pain I felt. That’s when I knew I needed additional support to help me access the deeper, more hidden parts that needed tending. CARING FOR GRIEF & TRAUMA If this conversation is the medicine you need right now, set the intention that whatever comes up is OK. You don’t need all the answers—you just need the willingness to explore.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Really, dear, I’m frightened: he might come and make a noise and I’d die; please let me go now: we’ll have lots of time in New York”—but I could not bear to let her go. “He’d never come here where there are two men”, I said, “never, he might find the wrong one”, and I drew her to me, but seeing she was only half reassured, I said while lifting her dress, “Let mine just touch yours, and I’ll let you go” and the next moment my sex was against hers and almost in spite of herself she yielded to the throbbing warmth of it; but when I pushed in, she drew away and down on it a little and I saw anxiety in her eyes that had grown very dear to me. At once I stopped and put away my sex and let her clothes drop. “You’re such a sweet, Jess”, I said, “who could deny you anything; in New York then, but now one long kiss.” She gave me her mouth at once and her lips were hot. I learned that morning that when a girl’s lips grow hot, her sex is hot first and she is ready to give herself and ripe for the embrace. * * * THE GREAT NEW WORLD! Chapter V. A stolen kiss and fleeting caress as we met on the deck at night were all I had of Jessie for the rest of the voyage. One evening landlights flickering in the distance drew crowds to the deck; the ship began to slow down. The cabin passengers went below as usual, but hundreds of immigrants sat up as I did and watched the stars slide down the sky till at length dawn came with silver lights and startling revelations. I can still recall the thrills that overcame me when I realized the great waterways of that land-locked harbor and saw Long Island Sound stretching away on one hand like a sea and the magnificent Hudson River with its palisades on the other, while before me was the East River, nearly a mile in width. What an entrance to a new world! A magnificent and safe ocean port which is also the meeting place of great water paths into the continent. No finer site could be imagined for a world capital; I was entranced with the spacious grandeur, the manifest destiny of this Queen City of the Waters. The Old Battery was pointed out to me and Governor’s Island and the prison and where the bridge was being built to Brooklyn: suddenly Jessie passed on her father’s arm and shot me one radiant, lingering glance of love and promise. I remember nothing more till we landed and the old banker came up to tell me he had had my little box taken from the “H’s” where it belonged and put with his luggage among the “S’s.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “No, no, swim on round till I tell you to stop.” Away I went again quite proud; but when I got round the second time I was tired; I had never swum so far and I had sunk deep in the water and a little spray of wave had gone into my mouth; I was very glad to get near the steps, but as I stretched out my hand to mount them, my father waved his hand.— “Go on, go on!” he cried, “till you’re told to stop.” I went on: but now I was very tired and frightened as well, and as I got to the bow the sailors leant over the bulwarks and one encouraged me: “Go slow, Jim, you’ll get round all right.” I saw it was big Newton, the stroke-oar of my father’s gig, but just because of his sympathy I hated my father the more for making me so tired and so afraid. When I got round the third time, I swam very slowly and let myself sink very low, and the stranger spoke for me to my father, and then he himself told me to “come up.” I came eagerly, but a little scared at what my father might do; but the stranger came over to me, saying, “he’s all blue; that water’s very cold, Captain; someone should give him a good towelling.” My father said nothing but “Go down and dress”, adding, “get warm.” The memory of my fear made me see that he was always asking me to do too much, and I hated him who could get drunk and shame me and make me run races up the rigging with the cabin boys who were grown men and could beat me. I disliked him. I was too young then to know that it was probably the habit of command which prevented him from praising me, though I knew in a half-conscious way that he was proud of me, because I was the only one of his children who never got sea-sick. A little later he arrived in Armagh, and the following week was wretched: I had to come straight home from school every day, and go out for a long walk with the “governor” and he was not a pleasant companion. I couldn’t let myself go with him as with a chum; I might in the heat of talk use some word or tell him something and get into an awful row. So I walked beside him silently, taking heed as to what I should say in answer to his simplest question. There was no companionship!

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Further, the demons’ power is greater than man’s: “There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him who was made to fear no one” (Job 41:24). Now through the action of man, a person may be rendered incapable of carnal copulation by some power or by castration; and this is an impediment to marriage. Therefore much more can this be done by the power of a demon. I answer that, Some have asserted that witchcraft is nothing in the world but an imagining of men who ascribed to spells those natural effects the causes of which are hidden. But this is contrary to the authority of holy men who state that the demons have power over men’s bodies and imaginations, when God allows them: wherefore by their means wizards can work certain signs. Now this opinion grows from the root of unbelief or incredulity, because they do not believe that demons exist save only in the imagination of the common people, who ascribe to the demon the terrors which a man conjures from his thoughts, and because, owing to a vivid imagination, certain shapes such as he has in his thoughts become apparent to the senses, and then he believes that he sees the demons. But such assertions are rejected by the true faith whereby we believe that angels fell from heaven, and that the demons exist, and that by reason of their subtle nature they are able to do many things which we cannot; and those who induce them to do such things are called wizards. Wherefore others have maintained that witchcraft can set up an impediment to carnal copulation, but that no such impediment is perpetual: hence it does not void the marriage contract, and they say that the laws asserting this have been revoked. But this is contrary to actual facts and to the new legislation which agrees with the old. We must therefore draw a distinction: for the inability to copulate caused by witchcraft is either perpetual and then it voids marriage, or it is not perpetual and then it does not void marriage. And in order to put this to practical proof the Church has fixed the space of three years in the same way as we have stated with regard to frigidity [4986](A[1]). There is, however this difference between a spell and frigidity, that a person who is impotent through frigidity is equally impotent in relation to one as to another, and consequently when the marriage is dissolved, he is not permitted to marry another woman. whereas through witchcraft a man may be rendered impotent in relation to one woman and not to another, and consequently when the Church adjudges the marriage to be dissolved, each party is permitted to seek another partner in marriage.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  TVIaybe everything bad that happens to you makes you weaJcer,' said Giovanni, as though he had not heard me, *and so you can stand less and less.' Then, looking up at me, TMo. The worst thing happened to me long ago and my life has been awful since that day. You are not going to leave me, are you?' I laughed, 'Of course not.' I started shaking the broken glass off our blanket onto the floor. 1 do not know what I would do if you left me.' For the first time I felt the suggestion of a threat in his voice— or I put it there. 1 have been alone so long—I do not think I would be able to live if I had to be alone again.' Tou aren't alone now,' I said. And then, quickly, for I could not, at that moment, have James Baldwin 146 endured his touch: 'Shall we go for a walk? Come— out of this room for a minute/ 1 grinned and cuffed him roughly, football fashion, on the neck. Then we clung together for an instant. I pushed him away. I'll buy you a drink,' I said. *And will you bring me home again?' he asked. Tes. I'll bring you home again/ *Je faime, tu sais?' *]e le sais, mon vieux' He went to the sink and started washing his face. He combed his hair. I watched him. He grinned at me in the mirror, looking, suddenly, beautiful and happy. And young— I had never in my life before felt so helpless or so old. 'But we will be alright 1' he cried. *N'est'Ce pas?' 'Certainly,' I said. He turned from the mirror. He was serious again. 'But you know— I do not know how long it will be before I find another job. And we have almost no money. Do you have any money? Did any money come from New York for you today?' 'No money came from New York today,' I said, calmly, 'but I have a little money in my pocket.' I took it all out and put it on the table. 'About four thousand francs.' 'And r—he went through his pockets, scat- tering bills and change. He shrugged and smiled at me, that fantastically sweet and helpless and moving smile. *Je m'excuse, I went a little mad.' He went down on his hands and knees and GIOVANWrS ROOM 147 gathered it up and put it on the table beside the money I had placed there. About three thousand francs worth of bills had to be pasted together and we put those aside until later. The rest of the money on the table totalled about nine thousand francs. We are not rich/ said Giovanni grimly, *but we will eat tomorrow/

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Some days afterwards, the gentleman, fancying that the prince had forgotten what he had told him, went to see the lady in the evening, and stayed very late. The prince told his wife that Madame de Neufchastel had a severe cold, and the good lady begged him to go see her for them both, and apologise for her, as she was pre- vented from accompanying him by indispensable busi- ness. The prince waited till the king was in bed, and then went to say good evening to the widow. He had just reached the foot of the staircase, and was about to go up, when he met a valet de chambre coming down, 440 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [iVw^/ 53. who swore, in reply to the prince's questions, that his mistress was in bed and asleep. The prince retraced his steps, but presently, suspecting that the vaiet had told a lie, he looked back, and saw the man returning hastily. He stopped, therefore, and walked up and down the yard before the door to watch if the valet re- appeared, and a quarter of an hour afterwards he saw him come down, and peer about in all directions to see who was in the yard. The prince, entertaining no doubt now that Seigneur des Cheriots was with the widow, and durst not come out for fear of him, continued his prom- enade for a long while. Recollecting that one of the lady's chamber windows looked upon a little garden, and was not very high, he called to mind the proverb which says, " Whoso cannot pass through the door let him jump through the window." Me therefore called one of his valets, and said, " Go into that garden, and if you see a gentleman come down from a window, draw your sword, and the moment he is down, make your sword clash upon the wall, and shout, ' Kill ! kill ! ' but do not touch him." The valet went to where his master ordered him., and the prince walked up and down till near midnight. The Seigneur des Cheriots, hearing that the prince was still in the yard, resolved to escape by the window, and throwing his cloak into the garden, he followed it with the help of his good friends. The valet no sooner espied him than he made a great clatter with his sword, and shouted, " Kill him, kill him ! " The poor gentle- man, mistaking the valet for the master, was so frightened that, without stopping to pick up his cloak, he ran off as fast as his legs could carry him, and was met by the archers of the watch, who were greatly sur- prised to see him running so. He durst not say any- thing else to them than to beg earnestly they would Sixth day. ] Q UEEN OF NA VARRE. 44 1

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear—fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live. Within this country where racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision, Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism. Even within the women’s movement, we have had to fight, and still do, for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our Blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson—that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid. In my house this year we are celebrating the feast of Kwanza, the African-american festival of harvest which begins the day after Christmas and lasts for seven days. There are seven principles of Kwanza, one for each day. The first principle is Umoja, which means unity, the decision to strive for and maintain unity in self and community. The principle for yesterday, the second day, was Kujichagulia—self-determination—the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others. Today is the third day of Kwanza, and the principle for today is Ujima—collective work and responsibility—the decision to build and maintain ourselves and our communities together and to recognize and solve our problems together. Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us. In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The women who sustained me through that period were Black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived intact. Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge—within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not—I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior. What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself—a Black woman warrior poet doing my work—come to ask you, are you doing yours? And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, “Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth. And it is never without fear—of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective. And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own. For instance, “I can’t possibly teach Black women’s writing—their experience is so different from mine.” Yet how many years have you spent teaching Plato and Shakespeare and Proust? Or another, “She’s a white woman and what could she possibly have to say to me?” Or, “She’s a lesbian, what would my husband say, or my chairman?” Or again, “This woman writes of her sons and I have no children.” And all the other endless ways in which we rob ourselves of ourselves and each other. We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken. My Mother’s Mortar

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  For example: Delete commas setting off title “Endymion.” “Tell,” as in “a line that seems to tell my present fear of life,” is of course wrong . “Describe” would be better . “Suggest” would be better still . On the other hand: “tell” might work: try “tell” as she uses it . I try it: She “tells” her present fear of life in relation to Sartre . I try it again: She “tells” her present fear of life in relation to Heidegger. She “tells” her understanding of the abyss. She qualifies her understanding of the abyss: “This is merely how I interpret the abyss; I could be wrong.” Considerable time passes before I realize that my preoccupation with the words she used has screened off any possible apprehension of what she was actually saying when she wrote her journal entry on that March day in 1984. Was that deliberate? Was I screening off what she said about her fear of life the same way I had screened off what she said about her fear of The Broken Man ? Hello, Quintana? I’m going to lock you here in the garage? After I became five I never ever dreamed about him? Did I all her life keep a baffle between us? Did I prefer not to hear what she was actually saying? Did it frighten me? I try the passage again, this time reading for meaning. What she said: My present fear of life . What she said: Pass into nothingness . What she was actually saying: The World has nothing but Morning and Night. It has no Day or Lunch. Let me just be in the ground. Let me just be in the ground and go to sleep . When I tell you that I am afraid to get up from a folding chair in a rehearsal room on West Forty-second Street, is this what I am actually saying? Does it frighten me? 25 L et me again try to talk to you directly. On my last birthday, December 5, 2009, I became seventy-five years old. Notice the odd construction there —I became seventy-five years old —do you hear the echo? I became seventy-five?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons of technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. [They are constantly on the prowl for more objects of fear.] Recall the case story of Sharon (in Chapter 8 ). She was the woman who had the horrific experience of working on the eightieth floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. During her session I guided her to the experience of being led down the staircase by a Port Authority employee and encountering a locked door on the seventieth floor. Suddenly trapped and unable to complete the escape, her body became paralyzed with fear. In working through this experience, which reestablished her running reflexes, she opened her eyes (toward the end of our session), looked at me and said, “I thought it was fear that gets you through … but it’s not … It’s something more powerful, something much bigger than fear … It’s something that transcends fear.” And what a deep biological truth she reveals here . Finally, the feeling of danger is the awareness of a defensive attitude . It prepares us to defend ourselves through escape or camouflage. Similarly, when our aggression is not thwarted, but is clearly directed, we don’t feel anger but instead experience the offensive attitude of protection, combativeness and assertiveness. Anger is thwarted aggression, while (uninhibited) aggression embodies self-protection. Healthy aggression is about getting what you need and protecting what you have . One sees this in the behaviors of neighborhood dogs. Dog 1 is at home in his yard, and then dog 2 comes along. Both dogs lift their legs and inscribe with their pee a territorial border. If they each stay on their own side, there will be no further problems. However, if the interloper (dog 2) breaches this boundary, the dog 1 will probably kick up dirt with its hind legs as a warning salvo. If dog 2 heeds this display, then again the situation calms. However, if dog 2 does not comply, then dog 1 will likely begin to growl and snarl.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  And indeed, it looked as if he were right. In spite of all the firemen could do, the fire spread with incredible rapidity. In half an hour I saw they were not going to master it soon or easily and I rode back to get Reece, who had told me that he would have come with me the previous night if he had known where the fire was. When I got back to the hotel, Reece had gone out on his own and so had Dell and the Boss. I went back to the fire. It had caught on in the most extraordinary way. The wooden streets now were all blazing; the fire was swallowing block after block and the heat was so tremendous that the fire-engines could not get within two hundred yards of the blaze. The roar of the fire was unearthly. Another thing I noticed almost immediately: the heat was so terrific that the water decomposed into its elements and the oxygen gas in the water burned vehemently on its own account. The water, in fact, added fuel to the flames. As soon as I made sure of this, I saw that the town was doomed and walked my pony back a block or two to avoid flying sparks. This must have been about three or four o’clock in the morning. I had gone back about three blocks when I came across a man talking to a group of men at the corner of a street. He was the one man of insight and sense I met that night. He seemed to me a typical, down-east Yankee: he certainly talked like one. The gist of his speech was as follows: “I want you men to come with me right now to the Mayor and tell him to give orders to blow up at least two blocks deep all along this side of the town; then, if we drench the houses on the other side, the flames will be stopped: there’s no other way.” “That’s sense”, I cried, “that’s what ought to be done at once. There’s no other way of salvation; for the heat is disintegrating the water and the oxygen in the water is blazing fiercely, adding fuel to the flames.” “Gee! that’s what I have been preaching for the last hour”, he cried. A little later fifty or sixty citizens went to the Mayor, but he protested that he had no power to blow up houses and evidently, too, shirked the responsibility. He decided, however, to call in some of the councilmen and see what could be done. Meanwhile I went off and wandered towards the Randolph Street bridge and there saw a scene that appalled me. Some men had caught a thief, they said, plundering one of the houses and they proceeded to string the poor wretch up to a lamp-post.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  But at that moment the tiny bell which an- nounced every entry into the shop rang, and Jacques said, 'Ah. Here is Giovanni.' And, in- deed, I felt him behind me, standing stock-still, staring, and felt in Hella's clasp, in her entire body, a kind of wild shrinking and not all of her composure kept this from showing in her face. When Giovanni spoke, his voice was thick with fury and relief and unshed tears. 'Where have you been?' he cried. 1 thought you were dead 1 1 thought you had been knocked 171 GIOVANNI'S ROOM down by a car or thrown into the river—what have you been doing all these days?' I was able, oddly enough, to smile. And I was astonished at my calm. 'Giovanni,' I said, 1 want you to meet my fiancee. Mile Hella. Monsieur Giovanni.' He had seen her before his outburst ended and now he touched her hand with a still, astounded politeness and stared at her with black, steady eyes as though he had never seen a woman before. 'Enchante, mademoiselle' he said. And his voice was dead and cold. He looked briefly at me, then back at Hella. For a moment we, all four, stood there as though we were posing for a tableau. Heally,' said Jacques, 'now that we are all together, I think we should have one drink to- gether. A very short one,' he said to Hella, cut- ting off her attempt at polite refusal and taking her arm. It's not every day,' he said, 'that old friends get together.' He forced us to move, Hella and he together, Giovanni and I ahead. The bell rang viciously as Giovanni opened the door. The evening air hit us like a blaze. We started walking away from the river, toward the boulevard. When I decide to leave a place,' said Gio- vanni, 1 tell the concierge, so that at least she will know where to forward my mail.' I flared briefly, unhappily. I had noticed that he was shaven and wore a clean, white shirt and tie— a tie which surely belonged to Jacques. 172 James Baldwin 1 don't see what you've got to complain about/ I said. Tou sure knew where to go/ But with the look he gave me then my anger left me and I wanted to cry. Tou are not nice/ he said. Tw n'est pas chic du tout' Then he said no more and we walked to the boulevard in silence. Behind us I could hear the murmur of Jacques' voice. On the comer we stood and waited for them to catch up with us.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Auden that Tony quoted that afternoon as “the best twenty-first birthday wish you can make for anyone”: So I wish you first a Sense of theatre; only Those who love illusion And know it will go far— Tasha and her father and John and Quintana and the whippets and the parrots and the white balloons, all still there, on film. I have a copy of the film. So I wish you first a sense of theatre— So her father would have said at the wedding in Millbrook . T he second such warning, this one not at all sudden, came in April 2009. Because I had been showing symptoms of neuritis, or neuropathy, or neurological inflammation (there seemed no general agreement on what to call it), an MRI was done, then an MRA. Neither suggested a definitive reason for the symptoms at hand but images of the Circle of Willis showed evidence of a 4.2 mm by 3.4 mm aneurysm deep in that circle of arteries—the anterior cerebral, the anterior communicating, the internal carotid, the posterior cerebral, and the posterior communicating—at the base of my brain. This finding, the several neurologists who examined the images stressed, was “entirely incidental,” had “nothing to do with what we’re looking for,” and was not even necessarily significant. One of the neurologists ventured that this particular aneurysm “doesn’t look ready to blow”; another suggested that “if it does blow, you won’t live through it.” This seemed to be offered as encouraging news, and I accepted it as such. At that instant in April 2009 I realized that I was no longer, if I had ever been, afraid to die: I was now afraid not to die, afraid that I might damage my brain (or my heart or my kidneys or my nervous system) and survive, continue living. Had there been an instant when Tasha was afraid not to die? Had there been an instant when Quintana was afraid not to die? Toward the very end, say, for example on the August morning when I walked into the ICU overlooking the river at New York-Cornell and one of what must have been twenty doctors in the unit happened to mention (a point of interest, a teachable moment, Grand Rounds for two students, the husband and the mother of the patient) that they were doing hand compression because the patient could no longer get enough oxygen through the ventilator? Only he did not say “the ventilator,” he said “the vent”? And I asked dutifully (the attentive student, up on the vernacular) how long it had been since the patient could get enough oxygen through the vent? And the doctor said it had been at least an hour? Did I get this all wrong? Did I misunderstand a key point? Could they have actually let an hour go by without mentioning to me that her brain had already been damaged by insufficient oxygen? Put the question another way: what if the attentive student had never asked ?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Generally, an animal in the wild , if not killed, recovers from its immobility and lives to see another day. It is wiser but none the worse for wear. For example, a deer learns to avoid a certain rock outcropping where it was ambushed by a mountain lion. While my observational hypothesis is based on field observations and is not empirically proven, my interviews with wildlife managers throughout the world have supported it. In addition, it is difficult to imagine how individual wild animals (or their entire species, for that matter) would have ever survived if they routinely developed the sorts of debilitating symptoms that many humans do. b This natural “immunity” is clearly not the case for us modern humans … but why and what can we do about it? Long-Lasting Immobility As I was completing my doctoral dissertation at Berkeley in 1977, I continued with my daily visits to the musty stacks of the graduate library, where I stumbled upon the critical key in my understanding of trauma. This article by Gordon Gallup and Jack D. Maser informed the central question of how the normally time-limited immobility response becomes long-lasting and eventually unending. 26 For their work, I would like to make a personal nomination for them to retroactively receive the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—along with the three ethologists previously mentioned. In a carefully thought-out and well-controlled experiment, the authors demonstrated that if an animal is both frightened and restrained, the period during which it remains immobilized (after the restraint is removed) is dramatically increased. There is a nearly perfect linear correlation between the level of fear an animal experiences when it is restrained, and the duration of immobility. 27 When an animal is not subjected to fear before being restrained, immobility generally lasts from seconds to about a minute. This spontaneous capacity is called “self-paced termination.” 28 In dramatic contrast, when both repeatedly frightened and repeatedly restrained, the experimental animal may remain immobilized for as long as seventeen hours! It is my clinical experience and understanding that such a robust potentiation has profound clinical implications for the understanding and treatment of human trauma. I shall discuss how the “potentiation,” or enhancement, of immobility by fear can lead to a self-perpetuating feedback loop causing an essentially permanent quasi-paralysis in the traumatized individual. This condition, I believe, underpins several of trauma’s most debilitating symptoms, especially numbing, shutdown, dissociation, feelings of entrapment and helplessness. A few years ago, in Brazil, I had the opportunity to observe the interaction between fear and immobility within a laboratory setting and thereby gained direct verification of the seminal work of Gallup and Maser on tonic immobility. Although there are very few researchers in this important field, I found one actively involved in experimental animal research on tonic immobility at the laboratory of Leda Menescal de Oliveira at the Federal University, School of Medicine in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil. Her work has focused on the brain pathways activated in tonic immobility.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  But whatever in me has grown outside and beyond Hugo will go on. March Yesterday at the Café de la Rotonde Henry told me he had written me a letter which he had torn up. Because it was a crazy letter. A love letter. I received this silently, without surprise. I had sensed it. There is so much warmth between us. But I am unmoved. Deep down. I am afraid of this man, as if in him I had to face all the realities which terrify me. His sensual being affects me. His ferocity, enveloped in tenderness, his sudden seriousness, the heavy, rich mind. I am a bit hypnotized. I observe his fine soft white hands, his head, which looks too heavy for his body, the forehead about to burst, a shaking head, harboring so much that I love and hate, that I want and fear. My love of June paralyzes me. I feel warmth towards this man, who can be two separate beings. He wants to take my hand and I appear not to notice. I make a swift gesture of flight. I want his love to die. What I have been dreaming of, just such a man’s desire of me, now I reject. The moment has come to sink in sensuality, without love or drama, and I cannot do it. He misunderstands so much: my smile when he talks about June at first fighting off all his ideas violently and later absorbing them and expressing them as if they were her own. “It happens to all of us,” he says, looking at me aggressively, as if my smile had been one of disdain. I believe he wants to fight. After the violence, the bitterness, the brutality, the ruthlessness he has known, my state of mellowness annoys him. He finds that, like a chameleon, I change color in the café, and perhaps lose the color I have in my own home. I do not fit into his life. His life—the underworld, Careo, violence, ruthlessness, monstrosity, gold digging, debauch. I read his notes avidly and with horror. For a year, in semisolitude, my imagination has had time to grow beyond measure. At night, in a fever, Henry’s words press in on me. His violent, aggressive manhood pursues me. I taste that violence with my mouth, with my womb. Crushed against the earth with the man over me, possessed until I want to cry out. At the Café Viking, Henry talks about discovering my real nature one evening when I danced the rumba for a few minutes alone. He still remembers a passage in my novel, wants to have the manuscript, to be able to read it over. He says it is the most beautiful writing he has read lately.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One morning I reproached Lizzie for not bringing me up a black draught Doctor Richards had promised to send me. “It’s on the mantle-piece in the dining-room”, I said, “but don’t trouble, I’ll get it myself”, and I ran down as I was. An evening or two later I left the belladonna mixture the doctor had made up for me on the chimney piece! Like the black draught it was dark brown in color and in a similar bottle. Next morning Lizzie woke me and offered me a glassful of dark liquid: “Your medicine” she said and half asleep still, I told her to leave the breakfast tray on the table by my bed and then drained the glass she offered to me. The taste awoke me: the drink had made my whole mouth and throat dry: I sprang out of bed and went to the looking-glass, yes! yes! the pupils of my eyes were unnaturally distended: had she given me the whole draught of belladonna instead of a black draught? I still heard her on the stairs but why waste time in asking her. I went over to the table, poured out cup after cup of tea and drained them: then I ran down to the dining-room where my sister and father were at breakfast. I poured out their tea and drank cups full of it in silence: then I asked my sister to get me mustard and warm water and met my father’s question with a brief explanation and request. “Go to Dr. Richards and tell him to come at once: I’ve drunk the belladonna mixture by mistake; there’s no time to lose.” My father was already out of the house! My sister brought me the mustard and I mixed a strong dose with hot water and took it as an emetic; but it didn’t work. I went upstairs to my bedroom again and put my fingers down my throat over the bath: I retched and retched but nothing came: plainly the stomach was paralysed. My sister came in crying. “I’m afraid there’s no hope, Nita”, I said, “the Doctor told me there was enough to kill a dozen men and I’ve drunk it all fasting; but you’ve always been good and kind to me, dear, and death is nothing.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  who could absolve her —that is to say, her priest, who paid frequent visits to his sheep. The dull old husband suspected nothing ; but as he was a rough and sturdy old fellow, she played her game as secretly as she could, beinij afraid that her husband would kill her if he came to know of it. One day, when the husband was gone into the fields, and his wife did not expect him back for some time, she sent for master parson to confess her ; but during the tmie they were making good cheer together the husband arrived so suddenly that the priest had not time to steal off. Intending, then, to hide, he went by the wife's di- rections up into a loft, and covered the trap-hole in the floor by which he had got in with a winnowing basket. Meanwhile, the wife, who was afraid her husband might suspect something, regaled him well at dinner, and plied him so well with wine, that the good man, having taken a little drop too much, and being fatigued with walking, fell asleep in a chair by the fireside. The priest, who found it dull work waiting in the loft, on ceasing to hear any noise in the room below, leaned over the trap-hole, and stretching out his neck as far as he could, saw that the good man was asleep. But while making his obser- vations he inadvertently leaned with so much weight on the winnowing basket, that down fell basket, priest and all, by the side of the good man, and woke him up with the noise. But the priest was on his legs before the other had opened his eyes, and said, " There's your win. nowing basket, gossip, and I'm much obliged to you;" and so saying, he walked off. The poor husbandman, quite bewildered, asked his wife what was the mat- ter } " It is your winnowing basket, my dear," she replied, " which the priest had borrowed and has now returned." 28o THE HEPTAMERON OF THE \JVoze/ 29. *' It is a very clumsy way of returning what one has borrowed," said the good man, grumbling, "fori thought the house was falhng." In this way the priest saved himself at the expense of the husbandman, who objected to nothing but the abrupt manner in which his reverence had returned his winnowing basket. The master he served, ladies, saved him for that time, in order to possess and torment him longer. " Do not imagine that simple folk are more exempt from craft than we are," said Geburon ; " far from it. they Jiave a great deal more. Look at thieves, mur- derers, sorcerers, false coiners, and other people of that sort, whose wits are always at work ; they are all simple folk."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: Joseph was minded to put away the Blessed Virgin not as suspected of fornication, but because in reverence for her sanctity, he feared to cohabit with her. Moreover there is no parallel, because then the sentence at law was not only divorce but also stoning, but not now when the case is brought to the Church for judgment. The Reply to the Third Objection is clear from what has been said. Reply to Objection 4: Sometimes when the husband suspects his wife of adultery he watches her secretly that together with witnesses he may discover her in the sin of fornication, and so proceed to accusation. Moreover, if he has no evidence of the fact, there may be strong suspicions of fornication, which suspicions being proved the fornication seems to be proved: for instance if they be found together alone, at a time and place which are open to suspicion, or “nudas cum nuda.” Reply to Objection 5: A husband may accuse his wife of adultery in two ways. First, he may seek a separation from bed before a spiritual judge, and then there is no need for an inscription to be made under the pain of retaliation, since thus the husband would gain his end, as the objection proves. Secondly, he may seek for the crime to be punished in a secular court, and then it is necessary for inscription to precede, whereby he binds himself under pain of retaliation if he fail to prove his case. Reply to Objection 6: According to a Decretal (Extra, De Simonia, cap. Licet), “there are three modes of procedure in criminal cases. First, by inquisition, which should be preceded by notoriety; secondly, by accusation, which should be preceded by inscription; [*Cf. [5002]SS, Q[33], A[7]] thirdly, by denunciation, which should be preceded by fraternal correction.” Accordingly the saying of our Lord refers to the case where the process is by way of denunciation, and not by accusation, because then the end in view is not only the correction of the guilty party, but also his punishment, for the safeguarding of the common good, which would be destroyed if justice were lacking. Whether in a case of divorce husband and wife should be judged on a par with each other?Objection 1: It would seem that, in a case of divorce, husband and wife ought not to be judged on a par with each other. For divorce under the New Law takes the place of the divorce [repudium] recognized by the Old Law (Mat. 5:31,32). Now in the “repudium” husband and wife were not judged on a par with each other, since the husband could put away his wife, but not “vice versa.” Therefore neither in divorce ought they to be judged on a par with each other.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiv. 3) They say this to alarm the people; as if they were incurring the suspicion of setting up an usurper. If, say they, the Romans in crowds follow Him, they will suspect us of setting up a tyranny, and will destroy our state. But this was wholly a fiction of their own. For what was the fact? Did He take armed men about with Him, did He go with horsemen in His train? Did He not rather choose desert places to go to? However, that they might not be suspected of consulting only their own interests, they declare the whole state is in danger. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix. 26) Or, they were afraid that, if all believed in Christ, none would remain to defend the city of God and the temple against the Romans: since they thought that Christ’s teaching was directed against the temple, and their laws. They were afraid of losing temporal things, and thought not of eternal life; and thus they lost both. For the Romans, after our Lord had suffered and was glorified, did come and take away their place and nation, reducing the one by siege, and dispersing the other. ORIGEN. (t. xxviii.) Mystically: It was fit that the Gentiles should occupy the place of them of the circumcision; because by their fall salvation came to the Gentiles. (non occ.). The Romans represent the Gentiles, being the rulers of the Gentile world. Their nation again was taken away, because they who had been the people of God, were made not a people. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiv) When they hesitated, and asked, What do we? one of them gave most cruel and shameless advice, viz. Caiaphas, who was1 High Priest that same year. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix) How is it that he is called the High Priest of that year, when God appointed one hereditary High Priest? This was owing to the ambition and contention of parties amongst the Jews themselves, which had ended in the appointment of several High Priests, who took the office in turn, year by year. And sometimes even there seems to have been more than one in office. ALCUIN. Of this Caiaphas Josephus relates, that he bought the priesthood for a year, for a certain sum. ORIGEN. (t. xxx. c. 12.) a The character of Caiaphas is shewn by his being called the High Priest of that same year; the year, viz. in which our Saviour suffered. Being the High Priest that same year, he said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. (non occ.). i. e. Ye sit still, and give no attention. Attend to me. So insignificant a thing as the life of one man may surely be made a sacrifice for the safety of the state.