Fear

Passages

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

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• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The narrow alleys of the red-light district bordered immediately on the open ghetto and nothing particular distinguished them from other streets. Impatient men waited at the little doors of the cells only ten yards away from the ragged children playing marbles in the cracks in the uneven pavement. The first shops on these streets were still occupied by second-hand dealers. The topography of the place suited me perfectly, for I could wander around as though I were passing there by accident or looking for something. But I could not prevent myself from walking too fast and too stiffly, with a false air of preoccupation. My quick searching glances into the main street, vaulted like a covered bazaar, never went beyond the dealers, and I avoided their eyes and those of passers-by as though I would find in them some sort of ironical accusation; so I hurried past. But even if I were to cross into the zone of public shame, how could I ever accost the women I saw there, sitting on their doorsteps? That seemed an insurmountable trial. And there was another frightening obstacle. I knew, from having often heard our school supervisors say so, that one should never go there without a condom. I had already seen comrades of mine, pale and proud, with rings around their eyes and an awkward gait, announce with affected nonchalance that they had caught gonorrhea, as though that were a proof of their virility. The others, who knew most of the prostitutes by name, would nod knowingly. “Never go to Lola without a condom. Fontana caught this from her.”

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  She held out a box of cigarettes to Cheri, smiling at him from blue eyes which had grown smaller, and he was frightened to find her so direct in her approach, and as jovial as an old gentleman. She called him ‘child’, and he turned away his eyes, as though she had let slip an indecent word. But he exhorted himself to be patient, in the vague hope that this first picture would give place to a shining transfiguration. The two women looked him over calmly, sparing him neither goodwill nor curiosity. ‘He’s got rather a look of Hernandez ...’ said Valerie Cheniaguine. ‘ Oh, X don’t see that at all,9 Lea protested. ‘Ten years ago perhaps ... and, anyhow, Hernandez had a much more pronounced jaw I* ‘Who’s that?’ Ch<§ri asked, with something of an effort. ‘A Peruvian who was killed in a motor accident about six months ago,’ said Lea. ‘He was living with Maximilienne. It made her very unhappy.’ ‘Didn’t prevent her finding consolation,’ said Valerie. ‘Like anyone else,’ Lda said. ‘You wouldn’t have wished her to die of it, surely? ’ She laughed afresh, and her merry blue eyes disappeared, lost behind wide cheeks bulging with laughter. Cheri turned away his head and looked at the woman in black. She had brown hair and an ample figure, vulgar and feline like thousands and thousands of women from the south. She seemed in disguise, so very carefully was she dressed as a woman in good society. Valerie was wearing what had long been the uniform of foreign princesses and their ladies — a black tailor-made of undistinguished cut, tight in the sleeve, with a blouse of extremely fine white batiste, showing signs of strain at the breast. The pearl buttons, the famous necklace, the high stiff whalebone collar, everything about Valerie was as royal as the name she legitimately bore. Like royalty, too, she wore stockings of medium quality, flat-heeled walking shoes and expensive gloves, embroidered in black and white. From the cold and calculating way she looked him over, Cheri might have been a piece of furniture. She went on with her criticisms and comparisons at the top of her voice. ‘Yes, yes, there is something of Hernandez, I promise you. But. to hear Maximilienne to-day, Hernandez might never have existed ... now that she has made quite certain of her famous Amerigo. And yeti And yet! I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen him, her precious Amerigo. I’m just backfrom Deauville. I saw the pair of them! ’ ‘No! Do tell us!’

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  I was afraid of swimming pools, high-tension wires, lye under the sink, aspirin in the medicine cabinet, The Broken Man himself. I was afraid of rattlesnakes, riptides, landslides, strangers who appeared at the door, unexplained fevers, elevators without operators and empty hotel corridors. The source of the fear was obvious: it was the harm that could come to her. A question: if we and our children could in fact see the other clear would the fear go away? Would the fear go away for both of us, or would the fear go away only for me? 10She was born in the first hour of the third day of March, 1966, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. We were told that we could adopt her late the afternoon of the same day, March third, when Blake Watson, the obstetrician who delivered her, called the house at Portuguese Bend in which we then lived, forty-some miles down the coast from Santa Monica. I was taking a shower and burst into tears when John came into the bathroom to report what Blake Watson had said. “I have a beautiful baby girl at St. John’s,” is what he had said. “I need to know if you want her.” The baby’s mother, he had said, was from Tucson. She had been staying with relatives in California for the birth of the baby. An hour later we stood outside the window of the nursery at St. John’s looking at an infant with fierce dark hair and rosebud features. The beads on her wrist spelled out not her name but “N.I.,” for “No Information,” which was the hospital’s response to any questions that might be asked about a baby being placed for adoption. One of the nurses had tied a pink ribbon in the fierce dark hair. “Not that baby,” John would repeat to her again and again in the years that followed, reenacting the nursery scene, the recommended “choice” narrative, the moment when, of all the babies in the nursery, we picked her. “Not that baby … that baby. The baby with the ribbon.” “Do that baby,” she would repeat in return, a gift to us, an endorsement of our wisdom in opting to follow the recommended choice narrative. The choice narrative is no longer universally favored by professionals of child care, but it was in 1966. “Do it again. Do the baby with the ribbon.” And later: “Do the part about Dr. Watson calling.” Blake Watson was already a folk figure in this recital. And then: “Tell the part about the shower.” Even the shower had become part of the recommended choice narrative. March 3, 1966.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  You won’t lose yourself, or if you do (temporarily), it’s because you needed to process what wasn’t working in order to heal. Now, this doesn’t mean that you’ll be over the situation—the loss of your job, your health, or a loved one. Or that you condone any abuse or betrayal. It just means that you’re willing to be restored so that you can carry on “with your one wild and precious life,” as the poet Mary Oliver would say. CHAPTER 7 R EST IN L OVE The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. — ERNEST BECKER, THE DENIAL OF DEATH For most of us, death remains our number one fear. Yet end-of-life conversations are often taboo, which is ironic considering it’s the one thing every living being has in common. We’ll talk about other tough stuff like money, fear, and the chlamydia we got from that rugby player we met in a New York City bar in the ’90s (or is that just me?), before we’ll go near that which will remain unspeakable. Instead, we shove death under the rug with other unsightly things, like pennies and lint-covered Tic Tacs. Our fear of death starts at a young age. My friend Suzanne O’Brien, RN, founder of Doulagivers, an organization that offers end-of-life care training, says that our first experiences with death often shape our fears around it. (Anyone else completely traumatized as a kid by Bambi ?) Many of us were raised by parents who thought it was best to shield us from the topic as a means of protection. But when we’re shielded from conversations or even the acknowledgment of death, we wind up filling in the gaps with our own imagination, which is rarely accurate or helpful—especially when we’re children. One reason adults might be hush-hush about death and mortality is that they have their own disordered relationship to it, so we pick up their baggage, too. So often, it’s not that kids can’t handle the truth but that their caregivers are illequipped to communicate openly about it. One of my first experiences with death was that of my grandpa passing when I was nine years old. I was lucky to have a mom who sat me down and opted to brass-tacks his departure to me. She lovingly stated the facts. And for reasons I can’t fully explain, I understood that he was gone, but that didn’t mean my feelings for him were gone. To me, he was still Pops. I still loved him, and he was still with me.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The concentration of population in the cities through competitive necessities, the consequent increase in rents, the enforced proximity to undesirable neighbors, the rise in the standard of luxury together with the decreased purchasing power of the average income—these account in the main for the declining birth-rate. When men are hardly able to keep their head above water, they fear to carry a child on their back. Fear stands where the spring of life should bubble and freezes it into subsidence. That situation raises the most serious questions in the most intimate morality of human life. Moreover, the absence of children decreases the cohesive power of the married relation, the blitheness and youthfulness of life, the unselfishness of character, the insight into human nature; in short, it blights much of what is really fine and high in the souls and relations of men. The luxury and culture made possible by the absence of children is a glittering varnish to cover decaying wood. The menace to the future of our nation is still greater through the fact that sterility is most marked among the able and educated families. The shiftless, and all those with whom natural passion is least restrained, will breed most freely. The prudent consider and shrink. The poor have little to lose. Children are their form of old-age pensions. The well-to-do see the possible depth to which they or their children may descend, and are afraid. Thus the reproduction of the race is left to the poor and ignorant. Unusual ability is not transmitted. The benefits of intellectual environment fail to be prolonged by heredity. The vital statistics of Harvard and Columbia graduates show a rapidly declining birth-rate and complete failure to reproduce their own number. I sat at a table with seven of the best and ablest men I know. We talked of children and found that only two had a child; one of the two was a Swede, the other the son of German immigrants. In a previous chapter we referred to the loss suffered by mankind through the sterility of its most ideal individuals while monasticism and priestly celibacy prevailed. Here we have a fact of equal historical significance, but unrelieved by the idealism of the monastic vow. Education can only train the gifts with which a child is endowed at birth. The intellectual standard of humanity can be raised only by the propagation of the capable. Our social system causes an unnatural selection of the weak for breeding, and the result is the survival of the unfittest. When the family is small, the influence of brothers and sisters on the formation of character is lacking. When the father has to work long hours and then spend additional time in travelling between his home and his work, the element of fatherhood in the home is reduced to a minimum. If the mother, too, goes out to work, the children are left to “the street,” which is an educator of rather doubtful value.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  in society are essentially delegated powers. The more com- plex society becomes, the less will it be possible for the in- dividual to attend to all his needs himself, and the more will he have to intrust others with specialized functions and powers. When a savage killed an animal for food and dressed its hide for clothing, he knew what he was getting. When a man buys canned meat and a ready-made suit, he has to trust to the honesty of others for what he gets. When a man deposits money in a savings bank or pays an insurance premium, he exercises trust. When he engages a lawyer to conduct a suit or search a title, the lawyer is a steward of intrusted power. When he submits the body of his child to a surgeon's knife, or its intellect to a school-teacher, or its soul to a preacher, he trusts, and these professional men are his trustees. Our life is woven through with such relations. Trust is the foundation of all higher social hfe. Life is good and restful in the measure in which it is safe to trust. Life turns back to the haunting suspicion and fear of the savage when man can no longer safely trust man. On the other hand, the more complex society becomes, the more difficult is it to watch over the fidelity of all the trustees, and the greater is the temptation of a trustee or steward to divert the trust to his own use. A farming community in New England can watch how the selectmen of the township use their delegated powers. The ordinary citizen in our great cities does not understand the machinery of the govern- ment and has only a shadowy idea of what is really being done by public officers with his property and under his authority. He is, in effect, the absentee landlord whose servants are made bold to pilfer and cheat because the eye of the owner is not on them. WHAT TO DO 383 Moreover, it is only when society arrives at wealth and power that "grafting" comes to pay. In a poor and savage community the individual has so little that the only way to get wealth without work is by downright robbery of the weak. As the average of wealth rises, and the aggregate of wealth becomes more enormous, a mere "rake-off" is enough to enrich the grafter. Hence in a savage community we have robbers and bandit chiefs ; in a civilized community we have a parasitic class who live in idleness and splendor by con- verting to their own use some kind of intrusted wealth or delegated power. "Grafting" is a highly perfected modern sin. Its essence is not stealing, but the corruption of a steward by one party and the betrayal of trust by a second party, who together profit at the expense of a third party, most frequently the pubUc.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Both adults were startled by the reaction and immediately went to the child. His father held him in his arms, and after a short time Aleksander calmed down. Instinctive movements may be large and powerful like Aleksander’s reaction to the “evil eye” of a bird of prey and the other fight/flight responses. Or they can be subtler, as in the small gasping when one cries inside. Instinctual movements can also be delicate, such as in the tiny throat movements that generate our most tender murmurs and whispers for our babies and lovers. In the Beginning, before the Word, Was Consciousness The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do with cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of our consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the cul-de-sac. —D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious Why did consciousness ever evolve in the first place? Why aren’t we, and all other animals, just going about our business without an inkling of our internal experience? After all, who needs all the feeling and suffering that goes along with consciousness? Without a satisfactory answer, we are left with a hole in the whole Darwinian argument. Wouldn’t any behaviors or functions that are so widespread throughout the kingdoms of man and beast be there because they are a requisite of survival? To begin to address this question we need first to inquire, simply, about the presumed function of consciousness. The Darwinian struggle for survival manifests as a continual arms race between predator and prey. The capacity for successful predation and clever evasion is a constantly evolving process. Combatants try out and refine (through genetic selection as well as through learning) diverse strategies enhancing strike capacity, camouflage and flight. They do this to ensure the right to eat and avoid being eaten. Anything that will help in maintaining an edge in the food supply war would generally be incorporated into the evolving scheme of brain and body. Even by the Cambrian period (some 500-plus million years ago) the fossils that have been preserved paint a picture of lethal jaws by which predators could dismember their prey, as well as exoskeletons that served as protection against attack from their enemies. a In addition, the creatures of this period had prehensile limbs and appendages by which they could pursue their prey and escape from their predators. Thus the typical modus operandi of this epoch became one of predatory/prey struggle for survival. Then, for about 280 million years, animals had begun to move in relation to physical space and gravity.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Should we attack first to protect ourselves, or would it be better to move quietly away? However, in modern times we are more apt to need our social skills to differentiate: do we like this person or dislike them, and what do they mean to us? Rather than coming to fisticuffs, we might first try to socially engage by conversing with the person; we might try to “disarm” him with an authentic smile. We are not acting out of emotion but rather are guided by sensate feelings—like or dislike? And most importantly we need to do this before we actually act—before we strike out with angry words. This way we enhance the capacity to prioritize possible motoric (and moment-to-moment) actions; we are able to choose which would be the most appropriate action. 156 What Feelings Do for Us Biologically, the expression of emotion serves primarily as a vital signaling function. For example, when we are frightened, both our face and our entire posture let everyone around us know directly that we sense danger lurking out there in the forest or bushes. When the bomb went off at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the “deer in the headlights,” “get me out of here” look on swimmer Janet Evans’s face signaled to everyone (there and on TV) that we’re all in danger. Had she run from the scene, it is likely that many would have followed her nonverbal command. The look of fear is unmistakable. The eyes are wide open with raised eyebrows. The mouth is partially opened with the corners strongly retracted, and the ears drawn back. 157 A herd of grazing elk being surveyed by an encroaching wolf pack employs their own method. Even knowing of their presence, the elk continue grazing—that is until one of its members first senses that the wolf has penetrated the “strike-ready” perimeter. Then in grunting and stiffening, all the others are signaled to follow its lead, dashing together toward safety. However, fear can also stimulate panic. People are frequently hurt or die because of “deer in the headlights” freezing. Emotion here could certainly not be said to be adaptive. If we freeze walking across the street or while driving our car, catastrophe is surely at hand. Similarly, nausea and the accompanying disgust appropriately signal, both to oneself and to others, that an ingested substance should not be eaten. However, this response is counterproductive (even detrimental) when it is someone’s persistent pattern of engaging with food that is not tainted. This maladaptive response can be triggered by people also. Disgust, as a habitual reaction to an appropriate sexual touch or warm embrace, can destroy a relationship and ruin a person’s life.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I spent long stretches at a Zen monastery to learn to calm the fuck down. I moved out of the city to the country, where the air was fresher and life was healthier. And I did a ton of soul-searching. All these changes were good in so many ways, improving my health, my well-being, and my overall quality of life. There was just one glaring issue: my actions to heal were motivated by fear. At my most extreme, I even elected to have a port—a small plastic medical device—surgically tunneled under my skin and attached to the large vein just above my heart. The port allowed me to experiment with very high doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid—a vein burner), as well as IV hydrogen peroxide and ozone treatments. Several of these protocols are used for different reasons as part of integrative therapies, and now even Western medicine has started studying vitamin C as a supplement to more traditional therapies, like chemo. PSA: While these kinds of alternative treatments can be helpful, I don’t advocate forgoing conventional medicine—especially without highly qualified supervision. Just sayin’. Did my holistic treatments help? Maybe, maybe not. One of my scans looked markedly better. But because my scans were often good, it was impossible to determine how or why. Was it the nature of my slow-growing disease or the nature of my choices or both? Why does one person with my rare cancer do well, while another doesn’t? Here we go again with the “whys” . . . Maybe if I’d kept grinding away in fear-based reactions, I would have reached my cancer-free goal. Or maybe I’d just be broke. None of these treatments were covered by my already too-expensive insurance. But since no one could tell me how long it would take to reach the finish line, or how effective these treatments would be, there was no end in sight. Did I mention that my oncologist had no idea what I was doing? Afraid he would try to stop me, I kept quiet about my extracurriculars. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he asked me if there was anything new going on. “Well, there is one thing,” I said, lowering the neck of my shirt to reveal my port. “What the heck is that?!” he said. “I tried to cure myself—again,” I replied, sheepish. He agreed to surgically remove the device if I promised not to wander off the beaten path again without consulting him first. Fair enough. But the experience (and his alarmed expression) really got me thinking. I was spending 90 percent of my time running around trying questionable therapies that my highly qualified doc didn’t sanction. What if I lived a long life with cancer, but missed out on the simple moments and everyday magic by wasting my days in worry? I couldn’t stomach that kind of regret, so I did what I rarely do. I quit. I quit trying to have perfect health.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  That voice lifted me up when I needed it most, and right then and there, I decided to become the CEO of my health, to build a game plan and team to support me. I called my new company “Save My Ass Technologies, Inc.,” and went about interviewing, hiring, and firing until I found the ideal candidate to be my second-in-command—an oncologist who saw me as a whole person and would go on to support me, body, mind, and spirit. They had to know the most about my rare shit pickle of an illness, have their finger on the pulse of research, and, of course, be kind. (No douchebags allowed.) After a long hunt, I finally found my wingman, Dr. D. With a positive and steady demeanor, he explained that sometimes my disease was slow growing and other times quite aggressive. How it would affect me would be a mystery, so he suggested a “watch and wait—let cancer make the first move” approach. We’d monitor my progress and hope for the slow-growing variety. If it became aggressive at some point, there might be treatment options available down the line. Fingers crossed. “And while we’re watching and waiting,” Dr. D. said, “you watch and live. Take care of yourself.” Was the good doctor high on his own stash? I had no idea how the hell to do that. To me, “healthy living” up until this point was forgoing the large fries for a medium at Burger King or bumming cigarettes instead of buying my own pack—habits that felt very necessary and comforting at the time. Even if I was lucky enough to have the slow-growing variety, living with never-ending cancer was like having anxiety on steroids. As I pondered Dr. D.’s parting words, I thought, How am I going to live with cancer without panicking about dying every day? At the time, I was still picking up the pieces of a broken engagement to the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with and was just figuring out how to be on my own again. I had no desire to embark on some Joseph Campbell–themed hero’s journey, which would require exploring some of life’s big questions, on top of my already aching heart. But thanks to the rupture, that’s not what happened. OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIREAfter the meeting with Dr. D., I went directly to Whole Foods Market (which I quickly took to calling “Whole Paycheck Market”) and never looked back. I knew there would be so much coming my way that would be out of my control, but what I could impact was what I ate and how I cared for myself. So I took my fear and channeled it into a healing game plan. Action was progress. Action kept me operational. Action made me eat fiber.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This latter term infers a strong genetic component but one that is not fully determined and is subject to modification. According to Darwin, 115 emotions are accompanied by bodily changes and by “incipient” bodily action. He describes, for example, the typical bodily action that accompanies rage : The body is commonly held erect; ready for instant action … The teeth are clenched or ground together … Few men in a great passion … can resist acting as if they intended to strike or push the man [with whom they are enraged] violently away. The desire, indeed, to strike often becomes so intolerably strong that inanimate objects are struck or dashed to the ground. 116 However, Lorenz modified this view of instinctive action patterns by pointing out that “even highly irascible people will refrain from smashing really valuable objects, preferring cheaper crockery.” 117 Emotion thus is associated with a tendency to specific action, a readiness for that action—but the action may be restrained, moderated or modified. Instincts, in essence, are expressed as actions—that is to say, as physical urges and movements. In early evolution, instinctual programs were “written” primarily for the action system. Instincts, therefore, are about movement—how to find food, shelter and a mate, as well as how to protect ourselves. These responses need no learning. They are hardwired in the service of our survival. One of the most basic instincts is our reaction to large looming shadows; another, which we share with even the smallest of creatures including mammals, birds, and possibly even moths, is our innate fear of eyes swooping down from above (presumably those of an avian predator). ‖ Arguably, this may be the genesis of our fear of the “evil eye,” expressed in many cultures in talisman, ritual and art. 118 An example of these innate reactions was sent to me by a friend concerning an episode with their young son: Aleksander, a usually calm, happy and peaceful child, was sixteen months old and still only crawling and standing, not yet walking. (He would start to walk at eighteen months.) He and his father went to a friend’s house to play. An adult friend was holding Aleksander on his lap and showed him a bag of rubbery or gelatinous eyeballs (the kind that that if you squeeze them, one will pop out). Aleksander did not seem to like the toy; he showed this by sharply turning away and making faces. Later, when Aleksander was sitting on the floor, a friend showed him the toy again, this time standing and squeezing the eye from above. The distance between the child and the popped eye was about four or five feet. Aleksander, in a fraction of a second, turned 180 degrees and catapulted backward, screaming and waving his hands and legs. He landed on the opposite wall crouched in the corner.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  He can infuse the spirit of moral enthusiasm into the economic struggle of the dispossessed and lift it to something more than a “stomach question.” On the other hand, among the well-to-do, he can strengthen the consciousness that the working people have a real grievance and so increase the disposition to make concessions in practical cases and check the inclination to resort to force for the suppression of discontent. If the ministry would awaken among the wealthy a sense of social compunction and moral uneasiness, that alone might save our nation from a revolutionary explosion. It would be of the utmost importance to us all if the inevitable readjustment could be secured by a continuous succession of sensible demands on the one side and willing concessions on the other. We can see now that a little more wisdom and justice on both sides might have found a peaceable solution for the great social problem of slavery. Instead of that the country was plunged into the Civil War with its fearful cost in blood and wealth. We have been cursed for a generation with the legacy of sectional hatred, and the question of the status of the black race has not been solved even at such cost. If Pharaoh again hardens his heart, he will again have to weep for his first-born and be whelmed in the Red Sea. It is a question if we can rally enough moral insight and good-will to create a peaceable solution, or if the Bourbon spirit is to plunge our nation into a long-continued state of dissolution and anarchy which the mind shrinks from contemplating. The influence of the Christian ministry, if exercised in the spirit of Christian democracy, might be one of the most powerful solvents and the decisive influence for peace. The Christian conception of life and property The spiritual force of Christianity should be turned against the materialism and mammonism of our industrial and social order. If a man sacrifices his human dignity and self-respect to increase his income, or stunts his intellectual growth and his human affections to swell his bank account, he is to that extent serving mammon and denying God. Likewise if he uses up and injures the life of his fellow-men to make money for himself, he serves mammon and denies God. But our industrial order does both. It makes property the end, and man the means to produce it. Man is treated as a thing to produce more things. Men are hired as hands and not as men. They are paid only enough to maintain their working capacity and not enough to develop their manhood. When their working force is exhausted, they are flung aside without consideration of their human needs. Jesus asked, “Is not a man more than a sheep?” Our industry says “No.” It is careful of its live stock and machinery, and careless of its human working force.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  6. Radegund: Survivor, Queen, Abbess 40 A Privileged but Unstable Childhood As a child of royalty in the restless, shape-shifting kingdoms of 6th-century Francia and Germany, Radegund had a comfortable life—at least in terms of food and clothing. But the endemic violence of the period taught the princess at an early age to be wary of complacency. She was born around 520 to Berthar, one of three brothers who jointly ruled the Thuringians. Thuringia was roughly near the city of Erfurt, 120 miles northeast of modern-day Frankfurt. The Merovingian kingdoms lay mostly in modern-day France. Both suffered from the same problematic inheritance structure, in which kings often divided their kingdoms equally among their male heirs or made them joint rulers. These kingdoms often ended in invasion or usurpation, as the rulers of ever-shrinking kingdoms sought expansion by pushing into the territory held by their male relatives. It was not surprising that the Thuringian kingship collapsed. One of the three brothers, Hermanfrid, killed the others, taking the royal children into his court as wards. But in 531, a neighboring king and his allies seized Hermanfrid’s kingdom by force. Radegund was perhaps 11 years old when the Merovingians descended on Thuringia. In a memorable story from her hagiography, the princess’s fate was momentarily a matter of chance, as the Merovingian leaders gambled for possession of the Thuringian spoils and prisoners. She was claimed by Chlotar, a notoriously aggressive and ambitious Merovingian ruler who also married two of her cousins. He sent Radegund to a villa at Athies in northern France, where she was cared for by the king’s trusted followers. Writings about Radegund Three of Radegund’s intimates wrote about her during her life or shortly after her death, and she is also mentioned in other historical records of the Merovingian royal families. We even have some of her own writings, which make clear that the deaths of almost all her family continued to live vividly in her memory and were central to her adult identity.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  177 23. Óscar Romero: Voice for the People Romero’s Shifting Worldview After a few years, Romero was made bishop of the smallest and poorest diocese in the country, Santiago de María, which included his hometown. He became increasingly convinced of the value of some grassroots efforts. He also noticed the increasing numbers of migrant coffee harvest workers sleeping in the streets. He opened Catholic buildings to shelter them, and in conversations with those staying in his own house, he learned that landowners were bribing government ministries to look the other way while paying illegally low wages. Romero’s worldview was slowly turning already when he was named archbishop in February 1977, after Chávez’s retirement. He was still seen as a deeply conservative choice, but the bloody events of that spring engendered a profound transition in Romero’s priorities. His growing empathy for the poor was matched by horror at the violence directed at them and resolve to do something about it. He was particularly affected by the murder and torture of priests, among them some of his closest friends. Landowners blamed the church for popular resistance, and handbills papered the streets, urging: “be a patriot, kill a priest.” By 1978, Romero’s advocacy for the poor had garnered international attention. He was nominated for the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. He also received harsh criticism from his conservative bishops and from the Congregation for Bishops at the Vatican. Romero was deeply disturbed by the Vatican criticism, retaining as he did his strong sense of obedience to church hierarchy. Romero’s work as a bishop took him back to the kind of communities in which he had grown up, and it forced him to confront the terrible dangers and injustices they were suffering.

• 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 Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Yes, yes. You run around all day long, but you go back to your kennel every night. Oh, you’re kept well in hand.’ He looked at her coldly: already he liked her less. ‘There’s no hiding anything from you, Baroness. I’ll fetch the car, and in under two hours we’ll be back at your front door.’ Cheri never forgot their nocturnal journey home, the sadness of the lingering crimson in the west, the smell of the grasses, the feathery moths held prisoner in the beam of the headlamps. The Baroness kept watch beside him, a dark form made denser by the night. He drove cautiously; the air, cool at faster speeds, grew hot again when he slowed down to take a corner. He trusted to his keen sight and his alert senses, but he could not help his thoughts running on the queer massive old woman motionless at his right side, and she caused him a sort of terror, a twitching of the nerves, which suddenly landed him within a few inches of a waggon carrying no rear lamp. At that moment a large hand came lightly to rest on his forearm. ‘ Take care, child! ’ He certainly had not expected either the gesture or the gentle tone of the voice. But nothing justified the subsequent emotion, the lump like a hard fruit stone in his throat. “I’m a fool, I’m a fool,” he kept repeating. He continued at a slower speed, and amused himself by watching the refraction of the beams, the golden zigzags and peacock’s feathers, that danced for a moment round the headlamps when seen through the tears that brimmed his eyes. “ She told me that it had a hold on me, that I was held well in hand. If she could see us, Edmde and me. ... How long is it since we took to sleeping like two brothers? ” He tried to count: three weeks, perhaps more? ‘‘And the joke about the whole business is that Edmee makes no demands, and wakes up smiling.” To himself, he always used the word ‘joke’ when he wished to avoid the word ‘sad’. “Like an old married couple,what! like an old married couple ... Madame and her Physician-in-Charge, Monsieur ... and ... his car. All the same, old Camille said that I was held. Held. Held. Catch me ever taking that old girl out again. ...” He did take her out again, for July began to scorch Paris. But neither Edmee nor Cheri complained about the dog-days. Cheri used to come home, polite and absent-minded, the backs of his hands and the lower part of his face nut-brown. He walked about naked between the bathroom and Edmee’s boudoir. ‘You must have been roasted to-day, you poor townees!’ Cheri jeered. Looking rather pale and almost melting away, Edmee straightened her pretty odalisque back and denied that she was tired.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I have no fear of God, and yet fear keeps me awake at night, fear of the devil. And if I believe in the devil, I must believe in God. And if evil is abhorrent to me, I must be a saint. Henry, save me from beatification, from the horrors of static perfection. Precipitate me into the inferno. Seeing Eduardo yesterday crystallized my mental chill. I listen to his explanation of my feelings. It sounds very plausible. I have suddenly turned cold towards Henry because I witnessed his cruelty to Fred. Cruelty has been the great conflict of my life. I witnessed cruelty in my childhood—Father’s cruelty towards Mother and his sadistic punishment of my brothers and me—and the sympathy I felt for my mother reached hysteria when she and my father quarreled, acts which paralyzed me later. I grew up with such an incapacity for cruelty it amounts to a weakness. Seeing a small aspect of it in Henry brought a realization of his other cruelties. And more than that, Fred aroused all the reserve in me, filling me with recollections of my childhood, which is what Eduardo describes as retrogression, falling back again into a childish state, which could keep me from progressing any further into maturer living. I had wanted to confide in someone, I even wanted to let myself be guided. Eduardo said the moment had come for me to be psychoanalyzed. He had always wanted this. He could help me by talking things over, but only Dr. Allendy could be a guide, a father (Eduardo loves to tempt me with a father figure). Why did I insist, instead, on making Eduardo my psychoanalyst? That was only postponing the real task. “Perhaps I like to look up to you,” I said. “In place of the other relationship, which you don’t want?” Somehow the talk seemed eminently effective to me. I was already singing. Hugo was off at a bank function. Eduardo went on analyzing. He was looking extraordinarily handsome. All during dinner I was affected by his forehead and his eyes, his profile, his mouth, his sly expression—the introvert gloating over his secrets. This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun. My laughter released him from seriousness. I told him about the allure of his face and his green eyes. I wanted him and took him, a casual lover. But a bad psychoanalyst, I teased, because he made love to his patient. As I ran upstairs to comb my hair, I knew that the next day I would rush to see Henry. All he does to combat my phantoms is to push me against the wall of his room and kiss me, to tell me in a whisper what he wants of my body today, what gestures, what attitudes. I obey, and I enjoy him to frenzy. We rush along over phantasmagoric obstacles.

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

  A week later we reached Wichita where we decided to rest for a couple of days and there we encountered another piece of bad luck. Ever since he had caught syphilis, Charlie seemed to have lost his gay temper: he became gloomy and morose and we could do nothing to cheer him up. The very first night he had to be put to bed at the gambling saloon in Wichita where he had become speechlessly drunk. And next day he was convinced that he had been robbed of his money by the man who kept the bank and went about swearing that he would get even with him at all costs. By the evening he had infected Bent and Jo with his insane determination and finally I went along hoping to save him, if I could, from some disaster. Already I had asked Bob to get another herdsman and drive the cattle steadily towards Kansas City: he consented and for hours before we went to the saloon, Bob had been trekking north. I intended to rejoin him some five or six miles further on and drive slowly for the rest of the night. Somehow or other, I felt that the neighborhood was unhealthy for us. The gambling saloon was lighted by three powerful oil lamps: two over the faro-table and one over the bar. Jo stationed himself at the bar while Bent and Charlie went to the table: I walked about the room trying to play the indifferent among the twenty or thirty men scattered about. Suddenly about 10 o’clock Charlie began disputing with the banker: they both rose, the banker drawing a big revolver from the table drawer in front of him. At the same moment Charlie struck the lamp above him and I saw him draw his gun just as all the lights went out leaving us in pitch darkness. I ran to the door and was carried through it in a sort of mad stampede. A minute afterwards Bent joined me and then Charlie came rushing out at top speed with Jo hard after him. In a moment we were at the corner of the street where we had left our ponies and were off: one or two shots followed; I thought we had got off scot free; but I was mistaken. We had ridden hell for leather, for about an hour when Charlie without apparent reason pulled up and swaying fell out of his saddle: his pony stopped dead and we all gathered round the wounded man: “I’m finished”, said Charlie in a weak voice, “but I’ve got my money back and I want you to send it to my mother in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. It’s about a thousand dollars, I guess.” “Are you badly hurt?” I asked. “He drilled me through the stomach first go off” Charlie said pointing, “and I guess I’ve got it at least twice more through the lungs: I’m done.”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  But there are no boxes to check for people who live outside of them, and boy does this mess with our culture, which is far more comfortable with clear-cut (and often traditional) definitions. Man or woman. Married or single. Black or white. Fat or skinny. Healthy or sick, and on and on. You can’t even get a frickin’ bikini wax without offering up your health status. Focus on my bush, please; my tumors are none of your business. In the beginning, I was caught up in the conventional medical paradigm, where you’re either a patient in treatment or a survivor (aka “winner”; only losers lose their battle, after all—or so the unhelpful metaphors would have us believe). Naturally, I wanted to be a winner. What would it take for that bell to ring for me? I wondered. I’ve since discovered that true healing doesn’t come from a finish line, bell, or box. It also doesn’t come from a relentless drive to fix yourself—as if you’re broken unless your life looks perfect. For so many years, I tried everything I could to be in remission. When conventional medicine didn’t have any options for me, I thought, Screw this, I’ll do it myself (just like everything else). I changed my diet and lifestyle. I fasted, cleansed, and detoxed. I left my toxic job. I spent long stretches at a Zen monastery to learn to calm the fuck down. I moved out of the city to the country, where the air was fresher and life was healthier. And I did a ton of soul-searching. All these changes were good in so many ways, improving my health, my well-being, and my overall quality of life. There was just one glaring issue: my actions to heal were motivated by fear. At my most extreme, I even elected to have a port—a small plastic medical device—surgically tunneled under my skin and attached to the large vein just above my heart. The port allowed me to experiment with very high doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid—a vein burner), as well as IV hydrogen peroxide and ozone treatments. Several of these protocols are used for different reasons as part of integrative therapies, and now even Western medicine has started studying vitamin C as a supplement to more traditional therapies, like chemo. PSA: While these kinds of alternative treatments can be helpful, I don’t advocate forgoing conventional medicine—especially without highly qualified supervision. Just sayin’. Did my holistic treatments help? Maybe, maybe not. One of my scans looked markedly better. But because my scans were often good, it was impossible to determine how or why. Was it the nature of my slow-growing disease or the nature of my choices or both? Why does one person with my rare cancer do well, while another doesn’t? Here we go again with the “whys” . . .

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Then guess what happens? Someone close to us enters the final season of their lives, and we have no idea what to do, how to support them, or even how to be in our own skin. At some point, that person will be us. None of us has that much time left, so we might as well drag death out of the sterile and lonely shadows in order to start feeling more capable, connected, and empowered in our mortality. TALKING ABOUT TALKING ABOUT ITWhile no one teaches us what to say, as his days counted down, Dad was one person who did want to talk about death. It felt selfish for me to keep resisting, just because I was clueless and scared and extremely underprepared. So, I googled it. How do you talk about dying with someone who’s dying? What do I say and not say? How do I do it without totally falling apart? I don’t know how to do this—help! Google suggested I start with small talk as a way to get the conversation going. Ask about his first job: “Shoveling snow in the neighborhood. Then my brother Jay signed up for a paper route. I was 10, he was 13. Jay quit, and my dad made me take over because you can’t leave a guy in the lurch without his paper.” Ask if he ever played a crazy practical joke: “I’m not a prankster with someone else’s feelings.” Ask what his first car was: “A 1958 Ford Thunderbird. That was my baby! I was working construction at West Point and had a pretty good paycheck sealing parking lots. I loved tooling around in that car. I was the hottest guy in the neighborhood.” After some practice, I got brave and asked a question of my own. “Do you want a foot rub with some cream?” “No, but I want a Cheeto,” he replied. Carole, my therapist, told me to take it a step further with a technique she called “talking about talking about it,” meaning start a conversation about how to approach the topic and what might happen when you do. “Let him know that you will likely have big emotions around it,” she said. I had a vision of sitting down with a supersize tissue box and a Valium patch as she continued, “As long as that’s OK, and not too painful or stressful for him, tell him that you’re willing to try.” Sounded reasonable to me. Here’s a good place to mention that if you feel compelled to broach this kind of conversation, your loved one may not be open to it, and that’s OK. Not everyone nearing death wants to address these topics head-on. Just as there is a lot of diversity in how we, as individuals, want to live, there’s diversity in how we want to die, too.