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 Giovanni's Room (1956)

  My poor father was baffled and afraid. He was unable to believe that there could be any- thing seriously wrong between us. And this was not only because he would not then have known what to do about it; it was mainly because he would then have had to face the knowledge that he had left something, somewhere, undone, something of the utmost importance. And since neither of us had any idea of what this so signi- ficant omission could have been, and since we were forced to remain in tacit league against Ellen, we took refuge in being hearty with each 26 James Baldwin other. We were not like father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies. I think my father sometimes actually believed this. I never did. I did not want to be his buddy; I wanted to be his son. What passed between us as masculine candor exhausted and appalled me. Fathers ought to avoid utter nakedness before their sons. I did not want to know—not, anyway, from his mouth—that his flesh was as unregenerate as my own. The knowledge did not make me feel more like his son—or buddy—it only made me feel like an interloper, and a frightened one at that. He thought we were alike, I did not want to think so. I did not want to think that my life would be like his, or that my mind would ever grow so pale, so without hard places and sharp, sheer drops. He wanted no distance between US; he wanted me to look on him as a man like myself. But I wanted the merciful distance of father and son, which would have permitted me to love him. One night, drunk, with several other people on the way back from an out-of-town party, the car I was driving smashed up. It was entirely my fault. I was almost too drunk to walk and had no business driving; but the others did not know this, since I am one of those people who can look and sound sober while practically in a state of collapse. On a straight, level piece of highway something weird happened to all my reactions, and the car sprang suddenly out of 27 GIOVANNI'S ROOM my control. And a telephone pole, foam-white, came crying at me out of the pitch darkness; I heard screams and then a heavy, roaring, tear- ing sound. Then everything turned absolutely scarlet and then as bright as day and I went into a darkness I had never known before.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  What more can they do to me? My time is limited, and this is so for each one of us. So how will the opposition reward me for my silences? For the pretense that this is in fact the best of all possible worlds? What will they give me for lying? A lifelong Safe Conduct Pass for everyone I love? Another lifetime for me? The end to racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Cruelty? The common cold? November 13, 1986 New York City I do not find it useful any longer to speculate upon cancer as a political weapon. But I’m not being paranoid when I say my cancer is as political as if some CIA agent brushed past me in the A train on March 15, 1965, and air-injected me with a long-fused cancer virus. Or even if it is only that I stood in their wind to do my work and the billows flayed me. What possible choices do most of us have in the air we breathe and the water we must drink? Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time and the arena and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle wherever we are standing. It does not matter too much if it is in the radiation lab or a doctor’s office or the telephone company, the streets, the welfare department, or the classroom. The real blessing is to be able to use whoever I am wherever I am, in concert with as many others as possible, or alone if needs be. This is no longer a time of waiting. It is a time for the real work’s urgencies. It is a time enhanced by an iron reclamation of what I call the burst of light—that inescapable knowledge, in the bone, of my own physical limitation. Metabolized and integrated into the fabric of my days, that knowledge makes the particulars of what is coming seem less important. When I speak of wanting as much good time as possible, I mean time over which I maintain some relative measure of control. November 14, 1986 New York City One reason I watch the death process so acutely is to rob it of some of its power over my consciousness. I have overcome my earlier need to ignore or turn away from films and books that deal with cancer or dying. It is ever so much more important now for me to fill the psyches of all the people I love and who love me with a sense of outrageous beauty and strength of purpose. But it is also true that sometimes we cannot heal ourselves close to the very people from whom we draw strength and light, because they are also closest to the places and tastes and smells that go along with a pattern of living we are trying to rearrange.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  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. Uses of the Erotic The Erotic as Power T here are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence. It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong.

• 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 Giovanni's Room (1956)

  'How do you feel?' he asked me. This is a very important day for you.' 1 feel fine,' I said. *How do you feel?' 74 James Baldwin Tiike a man,' he said, 'who has seen a vision/ *Yes?' I said. Tell me about this vision/ 1 am not joking/ he said. 1 am talking about you. You were the vision. You should have seen yourself tonight. You should see yourself now/ I looked at him and said nothing, Tou are—how old? Twenty-six or seven? I am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and you would simply be destroyed.' 'What is happening to me?* I asked. I had meant to sound sardonic, but I did not sound sardonic at all. He did not answer this, but sighed, looking briefly in the direction of the redhead. Then he turned to me. *Are you going to write to Hella?' 1 very often do/ 1 said. 1 suppose I wdll again/ That does not answer my question.' 'Oh. I was under the impression that you had asked me if I was going to write to HeUa.' 'Well. Let's put it another way. Are you going to write to Hella about this night and this morning?' 1 really don't see what there is to write about But what's it to you if I do or I don't?' He gave me a look full of a certain despair which I had not, till that moment, known was in him. It frightened me. 'It's not,' he said, 'what it is to me. It's what it is to you. And to her. And ' GIOVANNI'S ROOM 75 to that poor boy, yonder, who doesn't know that when he looks at you the way he does, he is simply putting his head in the lion's mouth. Are you going to treat them as you've treated me?' Tom? What have you to do with all this? How have I treated you?' Tou have been very unfair to me,' he said. Tou have been very dishonest.* This time I did sound sardonic. 1 suppose you mean that I would have been fair, I would have been honest if I had—if— despising me a little less.' 1 mean you could have been fair to me by Tm sorry. But I think, since you bring it up, that a lot of your life is despicable.' 1 could say the same about yours,* said Jacques. There are so many ways of being des- picable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptu- ous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.'

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

  b. Barrenness of earth; If thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep and to do all His commandments.… cursed shall be.… the fruit of thy ground, the herds of thy oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep.… The Lord will send upon thee famine and hunger, and a rebuke upon all the works which thou shalt do. Deut. 28:15, 18, 20. To Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work.… thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. Gen. 3:17, 18. c. Pestilence and Death; Therefore are there many weak and infirm among you, and many sleep. 1 Cor. 11:30, 31. While yet the flesh was between their teeth, neither had that kind of meat failed, behold, the wrath of the Lord was provoked against the people, and He smote them with an exceedingly great plague. Numb. 11:33. R. The triple remedy; a. Amendment of life; The country is wasted; the ground hath mourned, for the corn is wasted, the wine is dried up, the oil hath languished. The husbandmen are ashamed, the vinedressers have howled for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished.… Gird yourselves and mourn, O ye priests; howl, ye ministers of the Altar; go, lie in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God; because sacrifice and libation are cut off from the house of your God. Joel 1:10, 11, 13. b. Correction; Behold the day shall come, kindled as a furnace, and all the proud and all that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and the day that cometh shall set them on fire, saith the Lord of hosts, and shall not leave them root or branch. Mal. 4:1. Behold He cometh, saith the Lord of hosts; and who shall be able to think of the day of His coming? and who shall stand to see Him? For He is like a refining fire and like the fuller’s herb: and He shall sit refining and cleansing the silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold and as silver, and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice. Mal. 3:1–3. c. Rejection; I will judge you, saith the Lord; and I will make you subject to My scepture, and will bring you into the bands of the convenant; and I will pick out from among you the transgressors and the wicked, and will bring them out of the land where they sojourn; and they shall not enter into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord. Ezech. 20:36–38.

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

  A great obstacle to continence arises from extrinsic circumstances, such as constant intercourse with women. We read in Sirach (ix. 9), “Many have perished by the beauty of a woman, and hereby lust is enkindled as a fire..., for her conversation burns as fire.” And, in the same chapter, the following safeguard is proposed against these dangers: “Do not look upon a woman who has a mind for many, lest you fall into her snares. Do not frequent the company of a dancer, and do not listen to her lest you perish by the force of her charms.” Again (chapter xlii. 12), “Do not gaze on everybody’s beauty; and do not tarry among women. For from garments comes a moth, and from a woman the iniquity of a man.” St. Jerome, in his book against Vigilantius, writes that a monk, knowing his own frailty, and how fragile is the vessel which he carries, will fear to slip or stumble, lest he fall and be broken. Hence, he will chiefly avoid gazing at women, and especially at young ones, lest he be caught by the eyes of a harlot, and lest beauty of form lead him on to unlawful embraces. Abbot Moses, in his conferences to the fathers, says that, in order to preserve purity of heart, “we ought to seek solitude and to practise fasting, watching, and bodily labour: to wear scant clothing; and to attend to reading; in order, by these means, to be able to keep our heart uncontaminated by passion, and to ascend to a high degree of charity.” It is for this reason, that such exercises are practised in the religious life. Perfection does not consist in them; but they are, so to speak, instruments whereby perfection is acquired. Abbot Moses, therefore, continues, “Fasting, vigils, hunger, meditation on the scriptures, nakedness, and the privation of all possessions, are not themselves perfection; but they are the instruments of perfection. The end of discipline does not lie in them ; but, by their means we arrive at the end.”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  That’s a switch, worrying about losing weight. My friend Dagmar, who teaches here, has given me the name of a homeopathic doctor specializing in the treatment of cancer, and I’ve made an appointment to see her when I come back from the feminist book fair in London next week. She’s an anthroposophic doctor, and they believe in surgery only as a last resort. In spite of all this, I’m doing good work here. I’m certainly enjoying life in Berlin, sick or not. The city itself is very different from what I’d expected. It is lively and beautiful, but its past is never very far away, at least not for me. The silence about Jews is absolutely deafening, chilling. There is only one memorial in the whole city and it is to the Resistance. At the entrance is a huge grey urn with the sign, “This urn contains earth from German concentration camps.” It is such a euphemistic evasion of responsibility and an invitation to amnesia for the children that it’s no wonder my students act like Nazism was a bad dream not to be remembered. There is a lot of networking going on here among women, collectives, and work enterprises as well as political initiatives, and a very active women’s cultural scene. I may be too thin, but I can still dance! June 7, 1984 Berlin Dr. Rosenberg agrees with my decision not to have a biopsy, but she has said I must do something quickly to strengthen my bodily defenses. She’s recommended I begin Iscador injections three times weekly. Iscador is a biological made from mistletoe which strengthens the natural immune system, and works against the growth of malignant cells. I’ve started the injections, along with two other herbals that stimulate liver function. I feel less weak. I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the front lines, a talisman, a resurrection. A rough place on the chin of complacency. “What are you getting so upset about, anyway?” a student asked in class. “You’re not Jewish!” So what if I am afraid? Of stepping out into the morning? Of dying? Of unleashing the damned gall where hatred swims like a tadpole waiting to swell into the arms of war? And what does that war teach when the bruised leavings jump an insurmountable wall where the glorious Berlin chestnuts and orange poppies hide detection wires that spray bullets which kill?

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  So what had I done wrong and what was I going to have to pay for it and WHY ME? But finally a little voice inside me said sharply, “Now really, is there any other way you would have preferred living the past six years that would have been more satisfying? And be that as it may, should or shouldn’t isn’t even the question. How do you want to live the rest of your life from now on and what are you going to do about it?” Time’s a-wasting! Gradually, in those hours in the stacks of Barnes & Noble, I felt myself shifting into another gear. My resolve strengthened as my panic lessened. Deep breathing, regularly. I’m not going to let them cut into my body again until I’m convinced there is no other alternative. And this time, the burden of proof rests with the doctors because their record of success with liver cancer is not so good that it would make me jump at a surgical solution. And scare tactics are not going to work. I have been scared now for six years and that hasn’t stopped me. I’ve given myself plenty of practice in doing whatever I need to do, scared or not, so scare tactics are just not going to work. Or I hoped they were not going to work. At any rate, thank the goddess, they were not working yet. One step at a time. But some of my nightmares were pure hell, and I started having trouble sleeping. In writing this I have discovered how important some things are that I thought were unimportant. I discovered this by the high price they exact for scrutiny. At first I did not want to look again at how I slowly came to terms with my own mortality on a level deeper than before, nor with the inevitable strength that gave me as I started to get on with my life in actual time. Medical textbooks on the liver were fine, but there were appointments to be kept, and bills to pay, and decisions about my upcoming trip to europe to be made. And what do I say to my children? Honesty has always been the bottom line between us, but did I really need them going through this with me during their final difficult years at college? On the other hand, how could I shut them out of this most important decision of my life?

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Less than two months ago I was told by two doctors, one female and one male, that I would have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant. Between that telling and the actual surgery, there was a three-week period of the agony of an involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The surgery was completed, and the growth was benign. But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women, by some of you here today. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action. In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength. I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living. 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.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Cass, very nearly, in her fear and despair, sank slowly into her seat again; but Ellis, mopping his brow, and gleaming, was more cheerful than ever. “I don’t think that’s necessarily so,” he said—and wrung from the table the obligatory laugh—“and, anyway, Mrs. Silenski is responsible for a very heavy investment. Her husband is very valuable, we must take good care of his morale.” Ida and Cass watched each other. Ida smiled. “Will Richard’s morale suffer if you do not get home?” “Unquestionably,” said Cass. “I must go.” Ida’s face changed, and she looked down. She seemed, abruptly, weary and sad. “I guess you’re right,” she said, “and there’s no point in putting it off.” She looked at Ellis. “Walk her to a cab, sweetie.” “My pleasure,” said Ellis. “Good night, all,” said Cass. “I’m sorry I have to run, but I must.” She said, to Ida, “I’ll see you soon——?” “Shall I expect to see you at the usual place?” “If it’s still standing,” Cass said, after a moment, “yes.” She turned and made her way through the darkening room, with Ellis padding behind her. They gained the street, she feeling limp and frightened. Ellis put her into a cab. The cab was driven by a young Puerto Rican. “Good night, Mrs. Silenski,” Ellis said, and gave her his wet, hard hand. “Please give Richard my best, and tell him I’ll be calling him in a couple of days.” “Yes, I’ll tell him. Thank you. Good night.”

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Meeting the Threat It had been Jude's intention to write a treatise on the faith which all Christians share; but that task had to be laid aside in view of the emergence of people whose conduct and thought were a threat to the Christian Church (verse 3). In view of this situation, the need was not so much to expound the faith as to rally Christians in its defence. Certain individuals who had insinuated themselves into the Church were busily engaged in turning the grace of God into an excuse for open immorality and were denying the only true God and Jesus Christ the Lord (verse 4). These people were immoral in life and heretical in belief. The Warnings Against these intruders, Jude marshals his warnings. Let them remember the fate of the Israelites. They had been brought in safety out of Egypt, but they had never been permitted to enter the promised land because of their lack of belief (verse 5). The reference is to Numbers 13:26-14:29. Despite receiving the grace of God, it was still possible to lose eternal salvation by drifting into disobedience and faithlessness. Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust (Genesis 6:2); and now they were imprisoned in deepest darkness, awaiting judgment (verse 6). Anyone who rebels against God must look for judgment. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had given themselves over to lust and to unnatural conduct, and their destruction in flames is a dreadful warning to everyone who similarly goes astray (verse 7). The Evil Life These intruders are visionaries of evil dreams; they defile their flesh, and they speak evil of the angels (verse 8). Not even Michael the archangel dared speak evil even of the evil angels. Michael had been given the task of burying the body of Moses. The devil had tried to stop him and claim the body for himself. Michael had spoken no evil against the devil, even in circumstances like that, but had simply said: `The Lord rebuke you!' (verse 9). Angels must be respected, even when evil and hostile. These evil people condemn everything which they do not understand; and spiritual things are beyond their understanding.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The poor woman did so, and seeing her two women and her man lying dead on the ground, was so horrified, that she remained motionless and speechless as a statue The villain, who did not want to have her for an hour only, did not think fit to offer her violence then, and said to her, " Have no fear, mademoiselle ; you are in the hands of that man in all the world who loves you most." So saying, he took off his robe, beneath which he had a smaller one, which he presented to the demoi- selle, threatening, if she did not put it on, that he would treat her as he had done the others. The demoiselle, more dead than alive, made a show of obeying him, as well to save her life as to gain time, in hopes that her husband would return. She took off her headdress, by the Cordelier's order, as slowly as she could ; and when she had done so, the monk, without regard to the beauty of her hair, cut it off in haste, made her strip to her shift, and put on the small robe, and then, resuming his own, set off with all the speed he could make along with the little Cordelier he had so long coveted. God, who has pity on the wronged innocent, was touched by the tears of this poor lady, and so ordered things that her husband, having despatched his business sooner than he expected, took that very road to return home by which the Cordelier was carrying off his wife. The monk, descrying the husband from a distance, said to the lady, " Here comes your husband. I know that if you look at him he will try to get you out of my hands ; so walk before me, and do not turn your head in his di- rection, for if you make him the least sign, I shall have Come out into the yard," said tlie moni<, "and you will see what I have done." i Fourth ciay.\ QUEEN OF XAVARKE. 295

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  so as wars go this was an easy one But for we here who never woke up before to see plane shitting fire into chimney it was a damn awful lot! The baby’s father buried without his legs burned bones in piles along the road “any Cubans around here, girl? any guns?” singed tree-ferns curl and jerk in the mortar rhythms strumming up from shore​uphill a tree explodes showering the house with scraps of leaves the sweetish smell of unseen rotting flesh. For a while there was almost enough water​enough rice​enough quinine the child tugs at her waistband but she does not move quickly she has heard how nervous these green men are with their grenades and sweaty helmets who offer cigarettes and chocolate but no bread free batteries and herpes but no doctors no free buses to the St. Georges market no reading lessons in the brilliant afternoons bodies strewn along Telescope Beach these soldiers say are foreigners but she has seen the charred bits of familiar cloth and knows what to say to any invader with an M–16 rifle held ready while searching her cooking shed overturning the empty pots with his apologetic grin Imelda steps forward the child pressing against her knees “no guns, man, no guns here. we glad you come. you carry water?” The american deputy assistant secretary of defense for equal opportunity and safety pauses in her speech​licks her dry lips “as you can see the Department has a very good record of equal opportunity for our women” swims toward safety through a lake of her own blood. Diaspora Afraid is a country with no exit visas a wire of ants walking the horizon embroiders our passports at birth Johannesburg Alabama a dark girl flees the cattle prods skin hanging from her shredded nails escapes into my nightmare half an hour before the Shatila dawn wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen or a rickety midnight sleeper out of White River Junction Washington bound​again gulps carbon monoxide in a false-bottomed truck fording the Braceras Grande or an up-country river grenades held dry in a calabash leaving. A Question of Climate I learned to be honest the way I learned to swim dropped into the inevitable my father’s thumbs in my hairless armpits about to give way I am trying to surface​carefully remembering the water’s shadow-legged musk cannons of salt​exploding my nostrils’ rage and for years my powerful breast stroke was a declaration of war. Florida Black people fishing the causeway full-skirted​bare brown to the bellyband atilt on the railing​near a concrete road where a crawler-transporter will move the space shuttle from hangar to gantry. Renting a biplane to stalk the full moon in Aquarius as she rose under Venus between propellers Country Western surf feasting on frozen black beans Cubano from Grand Union in the mangrove swamp​elbows of cypress​scrub oak Moon​moon​moon on the syncopated road rimey with bullfrogs​walking beaches​fragrant and raunchy fire-damp sand between my toes. Huge arrogant cockroaches​with white people’s manners

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  While I watched this movie I was also thinking about the course of my own life, the paths I feel bound for inside myself, the way of life that feels most real to me. And I wonder what I may be risking as I become more and more committed to telling whatever truth comes across my eyes my tongue my pen—no matter how difficult—the world as I see it, people as I feel them. And I wonder what I will have to pay someday for that privilege, and in whose coin? Will those forces which serve non-life in the name of power and profit kill me too, or merely dismember me in the eyes of whoever can use what I do? When I stand in the radiance of a place like the Sapphire Sapphos dinner, with the elegant food and abundance of love and beautiful dark women, when I stand in that moment of sweetness, I sometimes become almost afraid. Afraid of their warmth and loving, as if that same loving warmth might doom me. I know this is not so, but it can feel like it. As if so long as I remained too different from my own time and surroundings I was safe, if terribly lonely. But now that I am becoming less lonely and more loved, I am also becoming more visible, and therefore more vulnerable. Malcolm saying to Martin in the film, “I love you, Martin, and we are both dead men.” February 9, 1984 New York City So. No doubt about where we are in the world’s story. It has just cost $32,000 to complete a government-commissioned study that purports to show there is no rampant hunger in the U.S.A. I wonder if they realize rampant means aggressive. So. The starving old women who used to sit in broken-down rooming houses waiting for a welfare check now lie under park benches and eat out of garbage bins. “I only eat fruit,” she mumbled, rummaging through the refuse bin behind Gristedes supermarket, while her gnarled Black hands carefully cut away the rotted parts of a cantaloupe with a plastic Burger King knife. February 18, 1984 Ohio How does it feel, Ms. L., to be a fifty-year-old Black woman who is still bleeding! Cheers to the years! Doing what I like to do best.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  After I had gone to bed she called me back to her twice. The first time I could not pierce through the veil of sleep, but I saw her light and heard her in my dreams. Then at 4:30 in the morning, her little fingers of light reached under the lined window curtains, and I got up as if bidden and went out onto the terrace to greet her. The night was very very still; she was low and bright and brilliantly clear. I stood on the terrace in my robe bathed in her strong quiet light. I raised my arms then and prayed for us all, prayed for the strength for all of us who must weather this time ahead with me. My mother moon had awakened me, calling me out into her brightness, and she shone down upon me as a sign, a blessing on that terrace with the soft gurgle of flowing water in my ears, a promise of answering strength to be whoever I need to be. I felt her in my heart, in my bones, in my thin blood, and I heard Margareta’s voice again: “It’s going to be a hard lonely road, but remember, help is on the way.” That was her farewell Tarot reading for me, seventeen years ago. December 27, 1985 Arlesheim Last night I dreamed I was asleep here in my bed at the Klinik and there was a strange physical presence lying beside me on the left side. I couldn’t see it because it was dark, but I felt this body start to touch me on my left thigh, and I knew that this meant great danger. “It must think I’m dead so it can have (claim) me,” I thought, “but if I moan it will know I’m awake and alive and it’ll leave me alone.” So I began to moan softly, but the creature didn’t stop. I could feel its cold fingers beginning to creep over my left hip, and I thought to myself, “Oh, oh, nightmare time! I’ve got to scream louder. Maybe that noise will make it go away, because there is nobody else here to wake me up!” So I screamed and roared in my sleep, and finally after what seemed like a very long time, I woke myself up calling out, and of course there was nothing in my bed at all, but it still felt as if death had really been trying. December 30, 1985 Arlesheim Frances and I went to the Konditorei [pastry shop] in town this afternoon to have a cup of tea and be together away from the hospital, when the elderly schoolteacher with the rhodonite necklace came in and wanted to sit down with us. It was so apparent how badly she wanted to talk that we couldn’t say no, even though we never have enough time alone together.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In the light of those facts, and from all the reading I’ve been doing these past weeks (thank the goddess for Barnes & Noble’s medical section), I’ve made up my mind not to have a liver biopsy. It feels like the only reasonable decision for me. I’m asymptomatic now except for a vicious gallbladder. And I can placate her. There are too many things I’m determined to do that I haven’t done yet. Finish the poem “Outlines.” See what europe’s all about. Make Deotha Chambers’ story live. If I have this biopsy and it is malignant, then a whole course of action will be established simply by their intrusion into the suspect site. Yet if this tumor is malignant, I want as much good time as possible, and their treatments aren’t going to make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of extended time. But they’ll make a hell of a lot of difference in terms of my general condition and how I live my life. On the other hand, if this is benign, I believe surgical intervention into fatty tissue of any kind can start the malignant process in what otherwise might remain benign for a long time. I’ve been down that road before. I’ve decided this is a chance I have to take. If this were another breast tumor, I’d go for surgery again, because the organ comes off. But with the tie-in between estrogens, fat cells, and malignancies I’ve been reading about, cutting into my liver seems to me to be too much of a risk for too little return in terms of time. And it might be benign, some little aberrant joke between my liver and the universe. Twenty-two hours of most days I don’t believe I have liver cancer. Most days. Those other two hours of the day are pure hell, and there’s so much work I have to do in my head in those two hours, too, through all the terror and uncertainties. I wish I knew a doctor I could really trust to talk it all over with. Am I making the right decision? I know I have to listen to my body. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all the work I’ve done since my mastectomy, it’s that I must listen keenly to the messages my body sends. But sometimes they are contradictory. Dear goddess! Face-up again against the renewal of vows.Do not let me die a coward, mother. Nor forget how to sing. Nor forget song is a part of mourning as light is a part of sun. March 22, 1984 En route to New York City This was a good trip. Good connections with the Sojourner Sisters and other women in St. Croix. And I finally taught myself to relax in water, swimming about under the sun in Gloria’s pool to the sound of Donna Summers blowing across the bright water, “State of Independence,” and the coconut tree singing along in the gentle trade winds.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Even the mighty will cry bitterly (Zephaniah 1:14); the inhabitants of the land shall tremble (Joel 2: 1); people will be terrified and will seek some place to hide and will find none (i Enoch 102:1, 102:3). (5) The last days will be a time when the world will be shattered, a time of cosmic upheaval when the universe, as we know it, will disintegrate. The stars will be extinguished; the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Isaiah 13:10; Joel 2:30-1, 3:15). The firmament will crash in ruins; there will be a torrent of raging fire, and creation will become a molten mass (Sibylline Oracles 3:83-9). The seasons will lose their order, and there will be neither night nor dawn (Sibylline Oracles 3:796-806). (6) The last days will be a time when human relationships will be destroyed. Hatred and enmity will reign upon the earth. People will turn against their neighbours (Zechariah 14:13). Brothers will kill each other; parents will murder their own children; from dawn to sunset they shall slay one another (1 Enoch 100:1-2). Honour will be turned into shame, strength into humiliation, and beauty into ugliness. Jealousy will arise in those who did not think much of themselves, and passion will take hold of those who were peaceful (2 Baruch 48:31-7). ('7) The last days will be a time of judgment. God will come like a refiner's fire - and who can endure the day of his coming (Malachi 3:1-3)? It is by the fire and the sword that God will plead with people (Isaiah 66:15-16). The Son of Man will destroy sinners from the earth (1 Enoch 69:27), and the smell of brimstone will pervade all things (Sibylline Oracles 3:58-61). The sinners will be burned up as Sodom was long ago (Jubilees 36:10-11). (8) In all these visions, the Gentiles have their place - but it is not always the same place. (a) Sometimes the vision is that the Gentiles will be totally destroyed. Babylon will become such a desolation that there will be no place for the wandering Arabs to plant their tents among the ruins, no place for the shepherds to graze their sheep; it will be nothing more than a desert inhabited by the beasts (Isaiah 13:19-22). God will trample down the Gentiles in his anger (Isaiah 63:6). The Gentiles will come over in chains to Israel (Isaiah 45:14). (b) Sometimes one last gathering of the Gentiles against Jerusalem is depicted, and one last battle in which they are destroyed (Ezekiel 38:14-39:16; Zechariah 14:I- ir). The kings of the nations will throw themselves against Jerusalem; they will seek to ravage the shrine of the Holy One; they will place their thrones in a ring round the city, with their faithless people with them; but it will be only for their final destruction (Sibylline Oracles 3:663-72). (c) Sometimes there is the picture of the conversion of the Gentiles through Israel.

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

  Behold I come against thee, saith the Lord God of hosts; and I will discover thy shame to thy face, and will show thy nakedness to the nations and thy shame to kingdoms; and I will cast abominations upon thee, and will disgrace thee and will make an example of thee. Nah. 3:5, 6. c. Loss of Heaven; Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones and all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men to be just, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. St. Matt. 23:27, 28. No hypocrite shall come before His presence. Job 13:16. The hope of the hypocrite shall perish. Job 8:13. If any one that is defiled shall eat of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace-offerings, which is offered to the Lord, he shall be cut off from his people. Lev. 7:20. The sinners in Sion are afraid, trembling hath seized upon the hypocrites. Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? Which of you can dwell with everlasting burnings? Is. 33:14. N. The remedy; a. Forgiveness; He said, As the Lord liveth there shall not one hair of thy son fall to the ground. 2 Kings 14:11. If Heaven shall be shut up, and there shall be no rain because of their sins, and they praying in this place shall do penance in Thy name, and shall be converted from their sins by reason of their afflictions; then hear Thou them in Heaven, and forgive the sins of Thy servants and of Thy people Israel; and show them the good way in which they should walk, and give rain upon Thy land. 3 Kings 8:35, 36. If the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all My commandments, and do judgment and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die. I will not remember all his iniquities that he has done. Ezech. 18:21, 22. If I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and he do penance for his sin, and do judgment and justice … he shall surely live, and shall not die. Ezech. 33:14, 15. b. Grace; Do good, O Lord, to those that are good, and to the upright of heart. Ps. 124:4. He that is good shall draw grace from the Lord. Prov. 12:2. c. Heaven; His lord said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things I will set thee over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy lord. St. Matt. 25:23. Now they that are redeemed by the Lord shall return, and shall come into Sion singing praises, and everlasting joy shall be on their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy; sorrow and mourning shall flee away. Is. 51:11.

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

  Reply to Objection 5: The builder of a new house, the planter of a vineyard, the newly married husband, were excluded from fighting, for two reasons. First, because man is wont to give all his affection to those things which he has lately acquired, or is on the point of having, and consequently he is apt to dread the loss of these above other things. Wherefore it was likely enough that on account of this affection they would fear death all the more, and be so much the less brave in battle. Secondly, because, as the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 5), “it is a misfortune for a man if he is prevented from obtaining something good when it is within his grasp.” And so lest the surviving relations should be the more grieved at the death of these men who had not entered into the possession of the good things prepared for them; and also lest the people should be horror-stricken at the sight of their misfortune: these men were taken away from the danger of death by being removed from the battle. Reply to Objection 6: The timid were sent back home, not that they might be the gainers thereby; but lest the people might be the losers by their presence, since their timidity and flight might cause others to be afraid and run away. Whether the Old Law set forth suitable precepts about the members of the household?Objection 1: It would seem that the Old Law set forth unsuitable precepts about the members of the household. For a slave “is in every respect his master’s property,” as the Philosopher states (Polit. i, 2). But that which is a man’s property should be his always. Therefore it was unfitting for the Law to command (Ex. 21:2) that slaves should “go out free” in the seventh year. Objection 2: Further, a slave is his master’s property, just as an animal, e.g. an ass or an ox. But it is commanded (Dt. 22:1–3) with regard to animals, that they should be brought back to the owner if they be found going astray. Therefore it was unsuitably commanded (Dt. 23:15): “Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant that is fled to thee.” Objection 3: Further, the Divine Law should encourage mercy more even than the human law. But according to human laws those who ill-treat their servants and maidservants are severely punished: and the worse treatment of all seems to be that which results in death. Therefore it is unfittingly commanded (Ex. 21:20,21) that “he that striketh his bondman or bondwoman with a rod, and they die under his hands . . . if the party remain alive a day . . . he shall not be subject to the punishment, because it is his money.”