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 Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Not yet,” cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting Marianne to lie down again, “but she will be here, I hope, before it is long. It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton.” “But she must not go round by London,” cried Marianne, in the same hurried manner. “I shall never see her, if she goes by London.” Elinor perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while attempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and quicker than ever! and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her alarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother. To consult with Colonel Brandon on the best means of effecting the latter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its performance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by her sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he was generally to be found at a much later hour than the present. It was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her difficulties were immediately before him. Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to attempt the removal of:—he listened to them in silent despondence;—but her difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his mind, he offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs. Dashwood. Elinor made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for post-horses directly, she wrote a few lines to her mother. The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon—or such a companion for her mother,—how gratefully was it felt!—a companion whose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve, and whose friendship might soothe her!—as far as the shock of such a summons could be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance, would lessen it.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  He told Luff to dance nude for him, explaining it was “the way of God.” Cult members described a life so controlled that almost anything they did could potentially be labeled as a “sin.” For example, Lundgren somehow considered sinful such things as eating too much garlic or keeping your own money. Jeffrey Lundgren was criminally convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on October 24, 2006.261 Unlike the followers of Charles Manson, who have either died in prison or remained confined to this day, five of Lundgren’s followers who were sentenced to prison have been released on parole.262 But Jeffrey Lundgren’s wife, son, and Susan Luff‘s husband, Ronald, remain in prison, serving minimum sentences that exceed one hundred years.263 1989—Roch Thériault Murders The same year as the Lundgren group murders, a Canadian survivalist, cult leader Roch Thériault, was also arrested for murder. Thériault, like David Berg, used the name of Moses and ruled over a commune that included his “concubines,” twenty-two children, and other followers located near Burnt River, Ontario. In 1989 social workers and police were investigating complaints of abuse and torture in Thériault’s group when they found the bodies of an infant and an adult. Solange Boislard had been brutally murdered and partially disemboweled as part of a purported “cult ritual.”264 Thériault engaged in both the physical and sexual abuse of his followers, including the amputation of the hand of one woman, Gabrielle Lavallee. Lavallee later wrote a book about her experience and explained, “The first step that I took was to use writing, to apply myself to deprogramming. Because we were brainwashed. And during the catharsis I was able to recreate the personality that I had before I endorsed his ideology.”265 The French film Savage Messiah , based on the book by Lavallee, was released in 2002.266 Thériault pled guilty to second-degree murder and in 1993 was sentenced to life in prison. During his imprisonment three of Thériault’s still-devoted “wives” were allowed conjugal visits, and the cult leader fathered more children. 267 Two of Thériault’s children wrote a book about their lives while growing up in the cult.268 Another prison inmate killed Roch Thériault, and he was found dead in his cell in February 2011.269 1993—David Koresh and the Waco Davidian Standoff Vernon Howell (also known as David Koresh) was the son a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he moved to Tyler, Texas, and joined a Seventh-day Adventist church at eighteen. Howell, however, had repeated conflicts with church members and left the Adventist church. He then went to Waco, where he found an obscure Seventh-day Adventist splinter group known as the Branch Davidians.270 Originally founded by an excommunicated member of the Seventh-day Adventist church named Victor Houteff, the Branch Davidians were a relatively benign and peaceful group.271 Lois Roden was leading the small community when Howell arrived. The young man cultivated a close relationship with the aging leader and after her death assumed control of the group.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Harry shook his head despairingly. “The more porn we’ve sucked out of the world, the larger the monster has grown,” he said. “This wasn’t in our forecasts. We thought there might be small anomalies of spontaneous generation, of course. But this—this is a personification of polymorphousness unlike anything the world of human suck-fuckery has ever known. I used to work as a trainer at Ocean Playground. The squid show there was nothing compared to this.” At that moment an enormous arm reached out of the oily liquid, and a huge hand grasped at nothing in the air. Five penises hung dangling off the forearm—it looked like a bizarre bagpipe. The hand was made up of half a dozen clustered vaginas. “That’s gross,” said Rhumpa. Harry made a little fatalistic laugh. “They’re pumping so much porn in here that it’s just feeding and feeding, and it grows a new appendage every few days. It’s got about ten arms. One’s really long, but a lot of them are smaller.” “I can see that it’s not pretty,” Rhumpa said. “But is it good or is it evil?” “Nobody knows,” said Harry. “Nobody knows its language.” “I’m going to try to talk to it,” said Rhumpa. She put her hands to her mouth. “Hey, longdog!” she called with loud authority. “Jizm! Weeperhole!” The pornhand paused for a moment, ceased groping, then subsided under the vermilion waves of mingling smut imagery. “You really know languages,” said Harry, impressed. Rhumpa knew she could talk to the pornmonster given enough time and quiet. “I can’t engage with it here,” she said. “Do you have a side chamber where we can go?” “Sure,” said Harry. “The sluice gate has an overflow tank, and sometimes the monster goes in there to rest.” Suddenly, several fountains of what looked like sperm, but orchid and navel orange in color, jetted up from the froth. Rhumpa looked at Harry questioningly. “It masturbates constantly,” Harry said. “You’ll have to put on a wetsuit.” Rhumpa nodded. They went to the room off the overflow tank. Rhumpa shucked off her shirt and pants and stepped into the suit. “Be careful,” said Harry. “Our containment system is only as good as its weakest link.” “Do you think it can feel love?” asked Rhumpa. “I doubt it,” said Harry. “I was reading Hawking’s book about the first seconds of the universe. I think our monster is as close as I’ll ever come to knowing what that’s like.” Harry hesitated. He looked a little green around the gills. “I’m going to have to leave you on your own here. I’ll be watching on the monitor. Men can’t take pornfumes for very long without fainting. We need breathing equipment. Women seem more immune.” Harry withdrew. Rhumpa walked out onto the tiled edge of the ancillary holding tank. She called out, “Hey, pornmonster! Cuntcall! Here it is!” She cupped her crotch through the wetsuit.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  Then one day they were jostled greatly and thrown into confusion. They looked at each other with alarm; it was clear that their enclosure was being tossed around on some ocean or tumbled down some steep incline. There was a sudden sharp concussion and an inrush of blinding searing light, which poured in as their fluid suspension slowly leaked away. They lay cupped and sprawling in one half of a silver egg that had cracked apart. After a moment, they stood. Their hands found each other. They were a couple, newly hatched. Loud sounds blossomed from enormous fleshy flushed faces, and Gallanos and Mellinnas were frightened. Moreover, their silver skin began to dry, and as it did they felt an almost unbearable warmth. They held on to each other tightly for protection but also because it soothed the burning of their acclimatizing skin. Gallanos’s penis was swollen and hot, and it seemed almost without their knowing it to slide inside Mellinnas. Then they were tightly embraced, a writhing ball of silver. The huge faces came closer to watch, and the silver couple could hear enormous booming noises, which they later understood were speech. But all they could do was move together to try to adjust to the shock of being exposed to air. Gallanos lay down on the surface of something hard and smooth, with a grain to it—the wooden tabletop—and his eggmate squashed herself to him and moved with amazing flexibility around and around on his molten twig. She opened her mouth, and he opened his, and then as feelings they hardly remembered gushed through them they pushed against the muteness of their throats until finally a series of small cries came out, strange uncertain sounds that increased in volume and pace until, as they reached the final throes of their lovemaking, they became groans of joy. The faces, watching, blinked and smiled. Gallanos and Mellinnas crawled onto a folded washcloth and fell asleep. More from the Author [image file=image_rsrc2SY.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2SZ.jpg] The Way the World WorksThe Anthologist [image file=image_rsrc2T0.jpg] Human SmokeWe hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  He was alarmed, and he looked over at her, but her eyes were closed, and she was sleeping. Soon the stiffness went away, and he went back to sleep. Then one day they were jostled greatly and thrown into confusion. They looked at each other with alarm; it was clear that their enclosure was being tossed around on some ocean or tumbled down some steep incline. There was a sudden sharp concussion and an inrush of blinding searing light, which poured in as their fluid suspension slowly leaked away. They lay cupped and sprawling in one half of a silver egg that had cracked apart. After a moment, they stood. Their hands found each other. They were a couple, newly hatched. Loud sounds blossomed from enormous fleshy flushed faces, and Gallanos and Mellinnas were frightened. Moreover, their silver skin began to dry, and as it did they felt an almost unbearable warmth. They held on to each other tightly for protection but also because it soothed the burning of their acclimatizing skin. Gallanos’s penis was swollen and hot, and it seemed almost without their knowing it to slide inside Mellinnas. Then they were tightly embraced, a writhing ball of silver. The huge faces came closer to watch, and the silver couple could hear enormous booming noises, which they later understood were speech. But all they could do was move together to try to adjust to the shock of being exposed to air. Gallanos lay down on the surface of something hard and smooth, with a grain to it—the wooden tabletop—and his eggmate squashed herself to him and moved with amazing flexibility around and around on his molten twig. She opened her mouth, and he opened his, and then as feelings they hardly remembered gushed through them they pushed against the muteness of their throats until finally a series of small cries came out, strange uncertain sounds that increased in volume and pace until, as they reached the final throes of their lovemaking, they became groans of joy. The faces, watching, blinked and smiled. Gallanos and Mellinnas crawled onto a folded washcloth and fell asleep. More from the Author The Way the World WorksThe Anthologist Human Smoke We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  Otherwise, the rock claimed me. Or, to put it another way, my inheritance was particular, specifically limited and limiting: my birthright was vast, connecting me to all that lives, and to everyone, forever. But one cannot claim the birthright without accepting the inheritance. Therefore, when I began, seriously, to write—when I knew I was committed, that this would be my life—I had to try to describe that particular condition which was—is—the living proof of my inheritance. And, at the same time, with that very same description, I had to claim my birthright. I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all. The conundrum of color is the inheritance of every American, be he/she legally or actually Black or White. It is a fearful inheritance, for which untold multitudes, long ago, sold their birthright. Multitudes are doing so, until today. This horror has so welded past and present that it is virtually impossible and certainly meaningless to speak of it as occurring, as it were, in time. It can be, and it has been, suicidal to attempt to speak of this to a multitude, which, assuming it knows that time exists, believes that time can be outwitted. Something like this, anyway, has something to do with my beginnings. I was trying to locate myself within a specific inheritance and to use that inheritance, precisely, to claim the birthright from which that inheritance had so brutally and specifically excluded me. It is not pleasant to be forced to recognize, more than thirty years later, that neither this dynamic nor this necessity have changed. There have been superficial changes, with results at best ambiguous and, at worst, disastrous. Morally, there has been no change at all and a moral change is the only real one. “ Plus ça change ,” groan the exasperated French (who should certainly know), “ plus c’est le même chose .” (The more it changes, the more it remains the same.) At least they have the style to be truthful about it. The only real change vividly discernible in this present, unspeakably dangerous chaos is a panic-stricken apprehension on the part of those who have maligned and subjugated others for so long that the tables have been turned. Not once have the Civilized been able to honor, recognize, or describe the Savage. He is, practically speaking, the source of their wealth, his continued subjugation the key to their power and glory. This is absolutely and unanswerably true in South Africa—to name but one section of Africa—and, as to how things fare for Black men and women; here, the Black has become, economically, all but expendable and is, therefore, encouraged to join the Army, or, a notion espoused, I believe, by Daniel Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, to become a postman—to make himself useful, for Christ’s sake, while White men take on the heavy burden of ruling the world. Well. Plus ça change.

• From The City of God

  437 Augustine’s Vision of Hell (Book 21) A ugustine focuses on the idea of hell in terms of the continuity and distance between sinning in time and being damned. Augustine thinks the doctrine of hell is not only just but gives us good reason to believe that hell is a creation of God’s goodness. Belief in hell has declined in the past century. We have a hard time imagining why anyone would suffer endlessly in a lake of fire for crimes they committed while on earth. So unlike most people in his own time, we face an initial blockage in struggling to see what Augustine was propounding. Immortal Suffering „In addressing hell, Augustine first distinguishes between two big issues that should be separately addressed: ›First is the question of how the situation of hell is possible at all; how plausible it is that we can imagine immortal bodies continually consumed but continually recreated in ceaseless fire. ›Second is the question of the precise nature of the punishment of the human soul and body. „On the issue of plausibility, Augustine appeals to the wide range of realities in that extend beyond our everyday experience. Sure, he says; consider salamanders, creatures who in Augustine’s age were widely considered to live in fire and volcanoes. The crucial point of his claim is that the world is much stranger than our normal experience would suggest. „On the issue of immortal bodies that suffer endlessly, he responds that demons certainly have suffered permanently since Creation Lecture 21

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

  Nero, owing to his youth, beauty, dash, and prodigality, and the startling novelty of his wickedness (Tacitus calls him "incredibilium cupitor," Ann. XV. 42), enjoyed a certain popularity with the vulgar democracy of Rome. Hence, after his suicide, a rumor spread among the heathen that he was not actually dead, but had fled to the Parthians, and would return to Rome with an army and destroy the city. Three impostors under his name used this belief and found support during the reigns of Otho, Titus, and Domitian. Even thirty years later Domitian trembled at the name of Nero. Tacit., Hist. I. 2; II. 8, 9; Sueton., Ner. 57; Dio Cassius, LXIV. 9; Schiller, l.c., p. 288. Among the Christians the rumor assumed a form hostile to Nero. Lactantius (De Mort. Persecut., c. 2) mentions the Sibylline saying that, as Nero was the first persecutor, he would also be the last, and precede the advent of Antichrist. Augustin (De Civil. Dei, XX. 19) mentions that at his time two opinions were still current in the church about Nero: some supposed that he would rise from the dead as Antichrist, others that he was not dead, but concealed, and would live until he should be revealed and restored to his kingdom. The former is the Christian, the latter the heathen belief. Augustin rejects both. Sulpicius Severus (Chron., II. 29) also mentions the belief (unde creditur) that Nero, whose deadly wound was healed, would return at the end of the world to work out "the mystery of lawlessness" predicted by Paul (2 Thess. 2:7). Some commentators make the Apocalypse responsible for this absurd rumor and false belief, while others hold that the writer shared it with his heathen contemporaries. The passages adduced are Apoc. 17:8: "The beast was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into perdition" ... "the beast was, and is not, and shall be present" (kai; pavrestai, not kaivper ejstivn, "and yet is," as the E. V. reads with the text. ec.); 17:11: "And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition;" and 13:3: "And I saw one of his heads as though it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed: and the whole world wondered after the beast." But this is said of the beast, i.e., the Roman empire, which is throughout clearly distinguished from the seven heads, i.e., the emperors. In Daniel, too, the beast is collective. Moreover, a distinction must be made between the death of one ruler (Nero) and the deadly wound which thereby was inflicted on the beast or the empire, but from which it recovered (under Vespasian). § 38. The Jewish War and the Destruction of Jerusalem. A.D. 70.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Then he had come to his senses—after nine days God gave him the power to tell her this thing could not be. She took his decision with the same casualness, the same near-amusement, with which she had taken his fall. He understood about Esther, during those nine days: that she considered his fear and trembling fanciful and childish, a way of making life more complicated than it need be. She did not think life was like that; she wanted life to be simple. He understood that she was sorry for him because he was always worried. Sometimes, when they were together, he tried to tell her of what he felt, how the Lord would punish them for the sin they were committing. She would not listen: ‘You ain’t in the pulpit now. You’s here with me. Even a Reverend’s got the right to take off his clothes sometime and act like a natural man.’ When he told her that he would not see her any more, she was angry, but she did not argue. Her eyes told him that she thought he was a fool; but that, even had she loved him ever so desperately, it would have been beneath her to argue about his decision—a large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what she could not have with ease. So it was over. Though it left him bruised and frightened, though he had lost the respect of Esther for ever (he prayed that she would never again come to hear him preach) he thanked God that it had been no worse. He prayed that God would forgive him, and never let him fall again. Yet what frightened him, and kept him more than ever on his knees, was the knowledge that, once having fallen, nothing would be easier than to fall again. Having possessed Esther, the carnal man awoke, seeing the possibility of conquest everywhere. He was made to remember that though he was holy he was yet young; the women who had wanted him wanted him still; he had but to stretch out his hand and take what he wanted—even sisters in the church. He struggled to wear out his visions in the marriage bed, he struggled to awaken Deborah, for whom daily his hatred grew. He and Esther spoke in the yard again as spring was just beginning. The ground was still with melting snow and ice; the sun was everywhere; the naked branches of the trees seemed to be lifting themselves upward toward the pale sun, impatient to put forth leaf and flower.

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

  The fact of his banishment to Patmos is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity.591 It is perpetuated in the traditions of the island, which has no other significance. "John—that is the thought of Patmos; the island belongs to him; it is his sanctuary. Its stones preach of him, and in every heart, he lives."592 The time of the exile is uncertain, and depends upon the disputed question of the date of the Apocalypse. External evidence points to the reign of Domitian, A.D. 95; internal evidence to the reign of Nero, or soon after his death, A.D. 68. The prevailing—we may say the only distinct tradition, beginning with so respectable a witness as Irenaeus about 170, assigns the exile to the end of the reign of Domitian, who ruled from 81 to 96.593 He was the second Roman emperor who persecuted Christianity, and banishment was one of his favorite modes of punishment.594 Both facts give support to this tradition. After a promising beginning he became as cruel and bloodthirsty as Nero, and surpassed him in hypocrisy and blasphemous self-deification. He began his letters: "Our Lord and God commands," and required his subjects to address him so.595 He ordered gold and silver statues of himself to be placed in the holiest place of the temples. When he seemed most friendly, he was most dangerous. He spared neither senators nor consuls when they fell under his dark suspicion, or stood in the way of his ambition. He searched for the descendants of David and the kinsmen of Jesus, fearing their aspirations, but found that they were poor and innocent persons.596 Many Christians suffered martyrdom under his reign, on the charge of atheism—among them his own cousin, Flavius Clemens, of consular dignity, who was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, who was banished to the island of Pandateria, near Naples.597 In favor of the traditional date may also be urged an intrinsic propriety that the book which closes the canon, and treats of the last things till the final consummation, should have been written last.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  They said good night hurriedly, for she was afraid of trouble when she got upstairs—though, in fact, Madame Williams seemed astonishingly indifferent to the hours Elizabeth kept—and he wanted to hurry back home and go to bed. Yet, as he hurried offdown the dark, murmuring street, she had a sudden impulse to call him back, to ask him to take her with him and never let her go again. She hurried up the steps, smiling a little at this fancy: it was because he looked so young and defenceless as he walked away, and yet so jaunty and strong. He was to come the next evening at supper-time, to make at last, at Elizabeth’s urging, the acquaintance of Madame Williams. But he did not come. She drove Madame Williams wild with her sudden sensitivity to footsteps on the stairs. Having told Madame Williams that a gentleman was coming to visit her, she did not dare, of course, to leave the house and go out looking for him, thus giving Madame Williams the impression that she dragged men in off the streets. At ten o’clock, having eaten no supper, a detail unnoticed by her hostess, she went to bed, her head aching and her heart sick with fear; fear over what had happened to Richard, who had never kept her waiting before; and fear involving all that was beginning to happen in her body. And on Monday morning he was not at work. She left during the lunch hour to go to his room. He was not there. His landlady said that he had not been there all week-end. While Elizabeth stood trembling and indecisive in the hall, two white policemen entered. She knew the moment she saw them, and before they mentioned his name, that something terrible had happened to Richard. Her heart, as on that bright summer day when he had first spoken to her, gave a terrible bound and then was still, with an awful, wounded stillness. She put out one hand to touch the wall in order to keep standing. ‘This here young lady was just looking for him,’ she heard the landlady say. They all looked at her. ‘You his girl?’ one of the policemen asked. She looked up at his sweating face, on which a lascivious smile had immediately appeared, and straightened, trying to control her trembling. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’ ‘He’s in jail, honey,’ the other policeman said. ‘What for?’ ‘For robbing a white man’s store, black girl. That’s what for.’ She found, and thanked Heaven for it, that a cold, stony rage had entered her.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  He lay face downward at the base of a tree, his fingernails digging into the scuffed earth. When he was turned over, his eyeballs stared upward in amazement and horror, his mouth was locked open wide; his trousers, soaked with blood, were torn open, and exposed to the cold, white air of morning the thick hairs of his groin, matted together, black and rust-red, and the wound that seemed to be throbbing still. He had been carried home in silence and lay now behind locked doors, with his living kinsmen, who sat, weeping, and praying, and dreaming of vengeance, and waiting for the next visitation. Now, someone spat on the pavement at Gabriel’s feet, and he walked on, his face not changing, and he heard it reprovingly whispered behind him that he was a good nigger, surely up to no trouble. He hoped that he would not be spoken to, that he would not have to smile into any of these so well-known white faces. While he walked, held by his caution more rigid than an arrow, he prayed, as his mother had taught him to pray, for loving kindness; yet he dreamed of the feel of a white man’s forehead against his shoe; again and again, until the head wobbled on the broken neck and his foot encountered nothing but the rushing blood. And he was thinking that it was only the hand of the Lord that had taken Royal away, because if he had stayed they would surely have killed him, when, turning a corner, he looked into Royal’s face. Royal was now as tall as Gabriel, broad-shouldered, and lean. He wore a new suit, blue, with broad, blue stripes, and carried, crooked under his arm, a brown-paper bundle tied with string. He and Gabriel stared at one another for a second with no recognition. Royal stared in blank hostility, before, seeming to remember Gabriel’s face, he took a burning cigarette from between his lips, and said, with pained politeness: ‘How-de-do, sir.’ His voice was rough, and there was, faintly, the odour of whisky on his breath. But Gabriel could not speak at once; he struggled to get his breath. Then: ‘How-de-do,’ he said. And they stood, each as though waiting for the other to say something of the greatest importance, on the deserted corner. Then, just as Royal was about to move, Gabriel remembered the white men all over town. ‘Boy,’ he cried, ‘ain’t you got good sense? Don’t you know you ain’t got no business to be out here, walking around like this?’ Royal stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or to take offence, and Gabriel said, more gently: ‘I just mean you better be careful, son. Ain’t nothing but white folks in town to-day. They done killed… last night…’ Then he could not go on.

• From The City of God

  405 Lecture 19 Transcript—Happiness and Politics (Book 19) Christians is full of blessings, of course, but no matter how cannily we seek to inhabit them, none of those blessings offer secure happiness. Christians affirm the necessity and genuine good of social life, and especially the happiness of domestic family life. But society is corrupt and dangerously unstable, and family life is, as both experience and scripture teach us, just as perilous. Neither of these settings offers secure happiness. The perils of the polity are even more vivid; the necessity of judgment and the use of violence screams out the wretched corruption of the human condition in the polities of this world. The differences of language and the misery of war offer still further evidence of humanity’s corruption. Not even friendship is carefree because we fear the loss of our friends, whether to death or distance or the sheer changes of character and personality that happen over life. In short, the world as we find it gives hints of being a sort of suitable host for a flourishing life; but when scrutinized close-up, the tantalizing promise of settled joy turns out to be a taunting mirage. The world is a site wherein creatures could perchance be happy; but particular features of this specific world, and certain characteristics apparently inherent in us, at least in this dispensation, invariably subvert our plans to be happy here, and vex our hopes for joy. It is worth noting the depth of Augustine’s acquaintance with the ancient philosophical traditions here, and the radicalness of his critique and rejection of them. The first four chapters of Book 19 comprise a treatise on the nature of the good life, a classic example of a well-established philosophical genre in the ancient world— calmly and lucidly laying out the possible options for the sapiens, the wise man, to consider in the leisure of his study. But then, what Augustine does with and to this genre is unprecedented. He says the whole approach is built upon illusion, the illusion that there is some technique or trick or gimmick that we can do to acquire this happiness for ourselves—there’s a fantasy that we

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Next time you take better care of yourself, darling.” By the time Mrs. Muñoz was finished talking she had skillfully passed the long slender catheter through my cervix into my uterus. The pain had been acute but short. It lay coiled inside of me like a cruel benefactor, soon to rupture the delicate lining and wash away my worries in blood. Since to me all pain was beyond bearing, even this short bout seemed interminable. “You see, now, that’s all there is to it. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She patted my shuddering thigh reassuringly. “All over. Now get dressed. And wear the pad,” she cautioned, as she pulled off the rubber gloves. “You start bleeding in a couple of hours, then you lie down. Here, you want the gloves back?” I shook my head, and handed her the money. She thanked me. “That’s a special price because you a friend of Anna’s,” she smiled, helping me on with my coat. “By this time tomorrow, it will be all over. If you have any trouble you call me. But no trouble, just a little cramps.” I stopped off on West 4th Street and bought a bottle of apricot brandy for eighty-nine cents. It was the day before my eighteenth birthday and I decided to celebrate my relief. Now all I had to do was hurt. On the slow Saturday local back to my furnished room in Brighton Beach the cramps began, steadily increasing. Everything’s going to be all right now, I kept saying to myself as I leaned over slightly on the subway seat, if I can just get through the next day. I can do it. She said it was safe. The worst is over, and if anything goes wrong I can always go to the hospital. I’ll tell them I don’t know her name, and I was blindfolded so I couldn’t know where I was. I wondered how bad the pain was going to get, and that terrified me more than anything else. I did not think about how I could die from hemorrhage, or a perforated uterus. The terror was only about the pain. The subway car was almost empty. Just last spring around that same time one Saturday morning, I woke up in my mother’s house to the smell of bacon frying in the kitchen, and the abrupt realization as I opened my eyes that the dream I had been having of giving birth to a baby girl was in fact only a dream. I sat bolt upright in my bed, facing the little window onto the air shaft, and cried and cried and cried from disappointment until my mother came into the room to see what was wrong. The train came up out of the tunnel over the bleak edge of south Brooklyn. The Coney Island parachute jump steeple and a huge grey gas storage tank were the only breaks in the leaden skyline.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I was allowed to shut my door to my room only while I was doing my homework and not for a moment longer. My room opened into the living room, and an hour after dinner I could hear my mother calling me. “What’s that door still closed about? You not finished your homework still?” I came to the door of my room. “I’m still studying, Mother, I have a geometry test tomorrow.” “You can’t bring the book and study out here? Look your sister working on the couch.” A request for privacy was treated like an outright act of insolence for which the punishment was swift and painful. In my junior year, I was grateful for the advent of television into our house. It gave me an excuse to retreat into my room and close my door for an acceptable reason. When I finally went to bed, scenes of violence and mayhem peopled my nightmares like black and white pepper. Frequently I woke to find my pillowcase red and stiffened by gushing nosebleeds during the night, or damp and saturated with the acrid smell of tears and the sweat of terror. I unzipped my pillow-covering and washed it by hand surreptitiously every weekend when I changed my bedlinen. I hung it on the back of the radiator in my room to dry. That pillow-covering became a heavy, unbleached muslin record of all the nightly blitzes of my emotional war. Secretly, I rather enjoyed the rank and pungent smells of my pillowcase, even the yeasty yellow stains that were left after my blood was washed away. Unsightly as they were, the stains, like the smells, were evidence of something living, and I so often felt that I had died and wakened up in a hell called home. I memorized Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Renascence,” all eight pages. I said it to myself often. The words were so beautiful they made me happy to hear, but it was the sadness and the pain and the renewal that gave me hope. For east and west will pinch the heart that cannot keep them pushed apart and he whose soul is flat, the sky will cave in on him, by and by. My mother responded to these changes in me as if I were a foreign hostile. I tried confiding in a guidance counselor at school. She was also the head of the english department, who kept telling me that I could do much better work if I tried, and that I could really be a credit to my people. “Are you having trouble at home, dear?” How did she know? Maybe she could help, after all. I poured my heart out to her. I told her all my unhappiness. I told her about my mother’s strictness and meanness and unfairness at home, and how she didn’t love me because I was bad and I was fat, not neat and well-behaved like my two older sisters.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  They were kind—he was sure that they were kind—and on the day that he would bring himself to their attention they would surely love and honour him. This was not his father’s opinion. His father said that all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low. He said that white people were never to be trusted, and that they told nothing but lies, and that not one of them had ever loved a nigger. He, John, was a nigger, and he would find out, as soon as he got a little older, how evil white people could be. John had read about the things white people did to coloured people; how, in the South, where his parents came from, white people cheated them of their wages, and burned them, and shot them— and did worse things, said his father, which the tongue could not endure to utter. He had read about coloured men being burned in the electric chair for things they had not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs; how they were tortured in prisons; how they were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Niggers did not live on these streets where John now walked; it was forbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a hand against him. But did he dare to enter this shop out of which a woman now casually walked, carrying a great round box? Or this apartment before which a white man stood, dressed in a brilliant uniform? John knew he did not dare, not to-day, and he heard his father’s laugh: ‘ No, nor to-morrow neither! ’ For him there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. This world was not for him. If he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try until the sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter. In John’s mind then, the people and the avenue underwent a change, and he feared them and knew that one day he could hate them if God did not change his heart. He left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant but no less strange.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  They watched him as he approached, and he tried not to look at them and to approximate the swagger with which they walked. One of them said, as he mounted the short, stone steps and started into the hall: ‘Boy, your brother was hurt real bad to-day.’ He looked at them in a kind of dread, not daring to ask for details; and he observed that they, too, looked as though they had been in a battle; something hangdog in their looks suggested that they had been put to flight. Then he looked down, and saw that there was blood at the threshold, and blood spattered on the tile floor of the vestibule. He looked again at the boys, who had not ceased to watch him, and hurried up the stairs. The door was half open—for Sarah’s return, no doubt—and he walked in, making no sound, feeling a confused impulse to flee. There was no one in the kitchen, though the light was burning—the lights were on all through the house. On the kitchen table stood a shopping-bag filled with groceries, and he knew that his Aunt Florence had arrived. The wash-tub, where his mother had been washing earlier, was open still, and filled the kitchen with a sour smell. There were drops of blood on the floor here too, and there had been small, smudged coins of blood on the stairs as he walked up. All this frightened him terribly. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to imagine what had happened, and preparing himself to walk into the living-room, where all the family seemed to be. Roy had been in trouble before, but this new trouble seemed to be the beginning of the fulfilment of a prophecy. He took off his coat, dropping it on a chair, and was about to start into the living-room when he heard Sarah running up the steps. He waited, and she burst through the door, carrying a clumsy parcel. ‘What happened?’ he whispered. She stared at him in astonishment, and a certain wild joy. He thought again that he really did not like his sister. Catching her breath, she blurted out, triumphantly: ‘Roy got stabbed with a knife!’ and rushed into the living-room. Roy got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it was sure that his father would be at his worst to-night. John walked slowly into the living-room. His father and mother, a small basin of water between them, knelt by the sofa where Roy lay, and his father was washing the blood from Roy’s forehead. It seemed that his mother, whose touch was so much more gentle, had been thrust aside by his father, who could not bear to have anyone else touch his wounded son. And now she watched, one hand in the water, the other, in a kind of anguish, at her waist, which was circled still by the improvised apron of the morning.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I had never seen such huge red blobs come from me before. They scared me. I was afraid I might be bleeding to death in that community bathroom in Brighton Beach in the middle of the night of my eighteenth birthday, with a crazy old lady down the hall muttering restlessly in her sleep. But I was going to be all right. Soon this was all going to be over, and I would be safe. I watched one greyish mucous shape disappear in the bowl, wondering if that was the embryo. By dawn, when I went to take some more aspirin, the catheter had worked its way out of my body. I was bleeding heavily, very heavily. But my experience in the OB wards told me that I was not hemorrhaging. I washed the long stiff catheter and laid it away in a drawer, after examining it carefully. This implement of my salvation was a wicked red, but otherwise innocuous-looking. I took an amphetamine in the thin morning sun and wondered if I should spend a quarter on some coffee and a danish. I remembered I was supposed to usher at a Hunter College concert that same afternoon, for which I was to be paid ten dollars, a large sum for an afternoon’s work, and one that would enable me to repay my debts to Ann and Miss Burman. I made myself some sweet milky coffee and took a hot bath, even though I was bleeding. After that, the pain dimmed gradually to a dull knocking gripe. On a sudden whim, I got up and threw on some clothes and went out into the morning. I took the bus into Coney Island to an early-morning foodshop near Nathan’s, and had myself a huge birthday breakfast, complete with french fries and an english muffin. I hadn’t had a regular meal in a restaurant for a long time. It cost almost half of Miss Burman’s five dollars, because it was kosher and expensive. And delicious. Afterward, I returned home. I lay resting upon my bed, filled with a sense of well-being and relief from pain and terror that was almost euphoric. I really was all right. As the morning slipped into afternoon, I realized that I was exhausted. But the thought of making ten dollars for one afternoon’s work got me wearily up and back onto the weekend local train for the long trip to Hunter College. By mid-afternoon my legs were quivering. I walked up and down the aisles dully, hardly hearing the string quartet. In the last part of the concert, I went into the ladies room to change my tampax and the pads I was wearing.

• From The City of God

  457 Lecture 21 Transcript—Augustine’s Vision of Hell (Book 21) role in Augustine’s catechesis of believers. As a doctrine it is not pedagogical, it is kind of an abstract remainder issue that he kind of has to figure out what to do with. Second, understand that, if you do fear Hell, if you have anxiety about it, you must understand that Augustine thinks this is a word of comfort—you are on the right path, being carried toward another place. He’s not trying to encourage you to cultivate fear of Hell, he is saying that if you have it already, you should be reassured that it is, in fact, something that you are not going to face. It may sound very surprising, but there are two things about the damned in Hell, on Augustinian terms, that could be comforting to you. First of all, the damned are, always, in some sense surprised to find themselves in Hell. They didn’t really expect that this would happen to them. If you find yourself worried about it, he says. that’s a good sign. The second thing is a bit odder still, Ultimately, he argues, the damned don’t mind being in Hell. They’d rather be there than anywhere else. Yes, they complain, yes they’re in torment, but really—for them, is there a more suitable place? Augustine doesn’t think so. So if you find Hell troubling, Augustine would say—take that as a good sign that you yourself would never say, as Milton’s Satan famously does, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Once we have seen Augustine on Hell, now we can turn, perhaps all the more gratefully, to his reflections on Heaven. That is what we will do next.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  When passed through the cervix into the uterus while soft, it coiled, all fifteen inches, neatly into the womb. Once hardened, its angular turns ruptured the bloody lining and began the uterine contractions that eventually expelled the implanted fetus, along with the membrane. If it wasn’t expelled too soon. If it did not also puncture the uterus. The process took about fifteen hours and cost forty dollars, which was a week and a half’s pay. I walked over to Mrs. Muñoz’ apartment after I had finished work at Dr. Sutter’s office that afternoon. The January thaw was past, and even though it was only 1:00 P.M., the sun had no warmth. The winter grey of mid-February and the darker patches of dirty Upper-East-Side snow. Against my peacoat in the wind I carried a bag containing the fresh pair of rubber gloves and the new bright-red catheter Ann had taken from the hospital for me, and a sanitary pad. I had most of the contents of my last pay envelope, plus the five dollars Ann had lent me. “Darling, take off your skirt and panties now while I boil this.” Mrs. Muñoz took the catheter from the bag and poured boiling water from a kettle over it and into a shallow basin. I sat curled around myself on the edge of her broad bed, embarrassed by my half-nakedness before this stranger. She pulled on the thin rubber gloves, and setting the basin upon the table, looked over to where I was perched in the corner of the neat, shabby room. “Lie down, lie down. You scared, huh?” She eyed me from under the clean white kerchief that completely covered her small head. I could not see her hair, and could not tell from her sharp featured, bright-eyed face how old she was, but she looked so young it surprised me that she could have a daughter old enough to be a nurse. “You scared? Don’t be scared, sweetheart,” she said, picking up the basin with the edge of a towel and moving it onto the other edge of the bed. “Now just lie back and put your legs up. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing to it—I would do it on my own daughter. Now if you was three, four months, say, it would be harder because it would take longer, see? But you not far gone. Don’t worry. Tonight, tomorrow, maybe, you hurt a little bit, like bad cramps. You get cramps?” I nodded, mute, my teeth clenched against the pain. But her hands were busy between my legs as she looked intently at what she was doing. “You take some aspirin, a little drink. Not too much though. When it’s ready, the tube comes back down and the bleeding comes with it. Then, no more baby.