Grief

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 Decameron (1353)

  And since her own milk was not yet dry after her recent confinement, she picked them up tenderly and applied them to her breast. They showed no sign of refusing this favour, but took suck from her as though she were their own mother; and from then on they made no distinction between their mother and herself. Thus the lady felt she had found some company on this deserted island, and having become just as familiar with the doe as with the two roebucks, she resolved to remain there for the rest of her days on a diet of grass and water, bursting into tears whenever she remembered her past life with her husband and children. As a result of leading this sort of life, the gentle woman had turned quite wild when, a few months later, a small Pisan ship happened to be driven in by a storm, casting anchor in the same little bay where she herself had arrived, and lying there for several days. Now, aboard this ship there was a gentleman of the Malespina family called Currado, 4 who was returning home from a pilgrimage with his worthy and devout lady after visiting all the holy places in the Kingdom of Apulia. One day, in order to relieve the monotony of the delay, he went ashore with his wife, some of his servants, and his dogs, and started exploring the island. And not very far from the place where Madonna Beritola was, Currado’s dogs began giving chase to the two roebucks, which had now grown quite big and were out grazing. Pursued by the dogs, the two roebucks ran to the very cave where Madonna Beritola was sheltering. Seeing what was happening, she got up, took hold of a stick, and drove the dogs back. Shortly afterwards, Currado and his lady, who had been following the dogs, arrived on the scene; and when they saw her standing there, all bronzed and emaciated, with long and unkempt hair, their astonishment, though much less than her own, was very great indeed. However, after Currado had complied with her entreaties to call off his dogs, they persuaded her, with a good deal of coaxing, to tell them who she was and what she was doing there, and she gave them a full account of her past life and all her misfortunes, ending by revealing her fierce determination to stay on the island. On hearing this, Currado, who had been very well acquainted with Arrighetto Capece, wept with compassion, and attempted to talk her out of her proud decision, offering to take her back to her home, or alternatively, to honour her as a sister and keep her in his own family, where she could stay until such time as God granted her a kindlier fate.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On the night of 18–19 July 1374, Petrarch died in Arquà, and when, three months later, the news of his death reached Certaldo, Boccaccio wrote a commemorative sonnet, thus rounding off his own comparatively undistinguished collection of shorter poems, the Rime , with a final tribute to one whom he rightly acknowledged as his master in vernacular lyric poetry. The earlier poems constituting Boccaccio’s Rime had been strongly derivative from the dolce stil novo and the rime petrose of Dante; the later ones took their cue from Petrarch. In the sixteenth century, the great Florentine linguist Lionardo Salviati was to assert that Boccaccio ‘non fece mai verso che avesse verso nel verso’ , by which he implied that his lyrical poetry was neither lyrical nor poetic. And whilst that is much too severe an assessment of Boccaccio’s skills as a lyric poet, it is certainly true that in the Rime he fell far short of the heights he scaled in the art of narrative, whether in verse or in prose. Generally speaking, the Rime form the least original part of the output of a writer whose work, whatever its shortcomings, was seldom lacking in originality. During the last few years of his life, Boccaccio was troubled by a succession of physical disorders, and suffered from severe obesity. This was probably the chief contributory factor to his final illness, leading to his death in Certaldo on 21 December 1375. II. THE WORLD OF THE NARRATORS The idea of assembling a substantial number of tales within a single work was doubtless one that Boccaccio had been contemplating for many years before he brought it to fruition. The questioni episode in the Filocolo and the nymphs’ accounts of their amorous exploits in the Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine are the two most obvious tokens in his earlier writings of the path he was eventually to follow. Those two extended episodes may be regarded as trial runs for a project of far more ambitious proportions, for which he must already have begun to gather the formidable amount of narrative raw material he would require, some of it being pressed into service in two of the questioni , as well as in another episode of the Filocolo . As for the actual design of the Decameron , there are many other significant pointers in the earlier works. One instance is the passage in the Fiammetta in which the narrator/protagonist reminisces nostalgically about excursions undertaken with her young Neapolitan fellow-patricians to Baiae, a location with strong classical associations where the remains of the ancient Roman Baths of Venus, the Terme di Venere, are still in evidence. There the hotter part of the day would be devoted, by the ladies themselves or in the company of young men ( o le donne per sé, o mescolate co’ giovani ), to amorous discussions ( amorosi ragionamenti ), with music and dancing and singing as their other diversions.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  This approach has special applications in the transformation of trauma in our society today. While this endorsement is not intended to suggest that we all seek shamanistic aid in healing trauma, we can gain valuable insight by studying how shamans address traumatic reactions. The methods used over the ages by medicine men and women are varied and complex. However, these diverse rituals and beliefs share a common understanding of trauma. When people are overwhelmed, their “souls” may become separated from their bodies. According to Mircea Eliade [5] (an important scholar of shamanistic practice), “rape of the soul” is by far the most widespread and damaging cause of illness cited by shamanic healers. Missing important parts of their souls, people become lost in states of spiritual suspension. From the shamanistic point of view, illness is a result of being stuck in “spiritual limbo.” Since pre-civilization, shamanistic healers from many cultures have been able to successfully orchestrate the conditions that encourage the “lost soul” to return to its rightful place in the body. Through colorful rituals, these so-called “primitive” healers catalyze powerful innate healing forces in their patients. An atmosphere of community support enhanced by drumming, chanting, dancing, and trancing creates the environment in which this healing takes place. Often the proceedings continue for days and may involve the use of plant substances and other pharmacological catalysts. Significantly, while the ceremonies themselves vary, the beneficiary of the healing almost always shakes and trembles as the event nears its conclusion. This is the same phenomenon that occurs in all animals when they release bound-up energy. It happened with Nancy that day more than twenty-five years ago in my urban office. Although we are cultures apart from these primitive peoples, modernized trauma survivors often use similar language to describe their experiences. “My father stole my soul when he had sex with me” is a typical description of the devastating loss experienced by the individual who was sexually abused as a child. When people share how they feel after medical procedures and operations, they also convey this sense of loss and disconnection. I have heard many women say, “The pelvic exam felt like a rape of my body and spirit.” People often feel disembodied for months or years following surgery employing general anesthesia. The same results can appear after seemingly minor accidents, falls, and even deep betrayals and abandonment.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  And to open that book was to disappear into many dream worlds, like the ones I had left behind after I started school and began to perfect language. The collection was generous in scope and included everyone from Elizabeth Bishop and her spectacular poem “The Fish” to William Blake’s “The Tiger” and the hypnotic lines “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night”; to Emily Dickinson (“I’m nobody! Who are you?”) and Lewis Carroll’s “The Crocodile” (“How doth the little crocodile/Improve his shining tail”). Those poems, taken as a group, summed up my soul at that crucial moment in my personal history. My father was out with girlfriends or coming home drunk and fighting my mother. He was the “tiger, tiger, burning bright.” My parents were in the process of a difficult divorce. My escape was remembering fishing with my grandfather the summer before and the “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow” of the caught fish glittering in the afternoon sunlight. I saw the police come to the house. My father staggered in and out with his belongings, with the smell of other women like strange clouds on his clothes. My mother confided my father’s shortcomings in me and I advised her to leave my father. I felt like I was “nobody—who are you?” My father disappeared. And so did I in this world without father. Emptiness took the place of everything I had known to be true. With the alligators or the crocodile, I could find refuge in another realm below this one. There are underground cities, other peoples. Even though I was the oldest female in my family, I didn’t gather and mother my brothers and sister when my father left. I dove into the other realm, and everyone was left to fend for him- or herself. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] In one of my last childhood memories of my father, I was a brown child wearing one of those dollar-apiece sun suits made of cheap polished cotton that fades after the first wash. It was tied at my shoulders. Two blue-black braids hung down my back. I was sweaty from running; my knees were scraped from jumping and falling. I leaned against my father. I adored him. And I was afraid of him. Together both of those places lived within me. I looked up toward his face and read his lips for mood. I read for love or imminent cruelty. He was laughing and making a joke with his friends. Yeasty beer smell mixed with father sweat. He pulled me to his lap. I heard his heart beating. I tapped the rhythm on his pressed-jean thigh. I was always tapping rhythms. I counted. One, and ah. Two, and ah. Three, and ah. Our heartbeats are numbered. We have only so many allotted. When we use them up, we die. How many did my father have? How many did I have?

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

  one hundred and sixty years to occupy the papal throne. With him the papacy came under French control, where it remained, with brief intervals, for more than a century. Urban displayed his strong national partisanship by his appointment of seven French cardinals in a conclave of seventeen. The French influence was greatly strengthened by his invitation to Charles of Anjou, youngest brother of Louis IX. of France, to occupy the Sicilian throne, claiming the right to do so on the basis of the inherent authority of the papacy and on the ground that Sicily was a papal fief. For centuries the house of Anjou, with Naples as its capital, was destined to be a disturbing element in the affairs, not only of Italy, but of all Europe.281 It stood for a new alliance in the history of the papacy as their ancestors, the Normans, had done in the age of Hildebrand. Called as supporter and ward of the papacy, Charles of Anjou became dictator of its policy and master of the political situation in Italy. Clement IV., 1265–1268, one of the French cardinals appointed by Urban, had a family before he entered a Carthusian convent and upon a clerical career. He preached a crusade against Manfred, who had dared to usurp the Sicilian throne, and crowned Charles of Anjou in Rome, 1266. Charles promised to pay yearly tribute to the Apostolic see. A month later, Feb. 26, 1266, the possession of the crown of Sicily was decided by the arbitrament of arms on the battlefield of Benevento, where Manfred fell. On the youthful Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., the hopes of the proud German house now hung. His title to the imperial throne was contested from the first. William of Holland had been succeeded, by the rival emperors, the rich Duke Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., elected in 1257 by four of the electors, and Alfonso of Castile, elected by the remaining three.282 Conradin marched to Italy to assert his rights, 1267, was met by the papal ban, and, although received by popular enthusiasm even in Rome, he was no match for the tried skill of Charles of Anjou. His fortunes were shattered on the battlefield of Tagliacozzo, Aug. 23, 1268. Taken prisoner, he was given a mock trial. The Bolognese lawyer, Guido of Suzarra, made an ineffective plea that the young prince had come to Italy, not as a robber but to claim his inheritance. The majority of the judges were against the death penalty, but the spirit of Charles knew no clemency, and at his instance Conradin was executed at Naples, Oct. 29, 1268. The last words that fell from his lips, as he kneeled for the fatal stroke, were words of attachment to his mother, "O mother, what pain of heart do I make for you!" With Conradin the male line of the Hohenstaufen became extinct. Its tragic end was enacted on the soil which had always been so fatal to the German rulers.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  In the quiet old house there was discipline and order, death had come and gone, yet these things persisted. Like the well-worn garment and favourite chair, discipline and order had survived the great change, filling the emptiness of the rooms with a queer sense of unreality at times, with a new and very bewildering doubt as to which was real, life or death. The servants scoured and swept and dusted. From Malvern, once a week, came a young clock-winder, and he set the clocks with much care and precision so that when he had gone they all chimed together—rather hurriedly they would all chime together, as though flustered by the great importance of time. Puddle added up the books and made lists for the cook. The tall under-footman polished the windows—the iridescent window that looked out on the lawns and the semi-circular fanlight he polished. In the gardens work progressed just as usual. Gardeners pruned and hoed and diligently planted. Spring gained in strength to the joy of the cuckoos, trees blossomed, and outside Sir Philip’s study glowed beds of the old-fashioned single tulips he had loved above all the others. According to custom the bulbs had been planted, and now, still according to custom, there were tulips. At the stables the hunters were turned out to grass, and the ceilings and walls had a fresh coat of whitewash. Williams went into Upton to buy tape for the plaits which the grooms were now engaged upon making; while beyond, in a paddock adjoining the beech wood, a couple of mares gave birth to strong foals—thus were all things accomplished in their season at Morton. But Anna, whose word was now absolute law, had become one of those who have done with smiling; a quiet, enduring, grief-stricken woman, in whose eyes was a patient, waiting expression. She was gentle to Stephen, yet terribly aloof; in their hour of great need they must still stand divided these two, by the old, insidious barrier. Yet Stephen clung closer and closer to Morton; she had definitely given up all idea of Oxford. In vain did Puddle try to protest, in vain did she daily remind her pupil that Sir Philip had set his heart on her going; no good, for Stephen would always reply: ‘Morton needs me; Father would want me to stay, because he taught me to love it.’ And Puddle was helpless. What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself, dared not say: ‘For your own sake you must go to Oxford, you’ll need every weapon your brain can give you; being what you are you’ll need every weapon,’ for then certainly Stephen would start to question, and her teacher’s very position of trust would forbid her to answer those questions.

• From Trash (1988)

  I am my mama’s daughter, her shadow on the earth, the blood thinned down a little so that I am not as powerful as she, as immune to want and desire. I am not a mountain or a cave, a force of nature or a power on the earth, but I have her talent for not seeing what I cannot stand to face. I make sure that I do not want what I do not think I can have, and I keep clearly in mind what it is I cannot have. I roll in the night all the stories I never told her, cannot tell her still—her voice in my brain echoing love and despair and grief and rage. When, in the night, she hears me call her name, it is not really me she hears, it is the me I constructed for her—the one who does not need her too much, the one whose heart is not too tender, whose insides are iron and silver, whose dreams are cold ice and slate—who needs nothing, nothing. I keep in mind the image of a closed door, Mama weeping on the other side. She could not rescue me. I cannot rescue her. Sometimes I cannot even reach across the wall that separates us. On my stepfather’s birthday I make coffee and bake bread pudding with bourbon sauce. I invite friends over, tell outrageous stories, and use horrible words. I scratch my scars and hug my lover, thinking about Mama twelve states away. My accent comes back and my weight settles down lower, until the ache in my spine is steady and hot. I remember Mama sitting at the kitchen table in the early morning, tears in her eyes, lying to me and my sister, promising us that the time would come when she would leave him—that as soon as we were older, as soon as there was a little more money put by and things were a little easier—she would go. I think about her sitting there now, waiting for him to wake up and want his coffee, for the day to start moving around her, things to get so busy she won’t have to think. Sometimes, I hate my mama. Sometimes, I hate myself. I see myself in her, and her in me. I see us too clearly sometimes, all the little betrayals that cannot be forgotten or changed. When Mama calls, I wait a little before speaking. “Mama,” I say, “I knew you would call.” Gospel Song

• From Trash (1988)

  I put the phone tight to my teeth and sobbed until she yelled to make me stop. “If now and then is all you got to offer, then we’ll see about now and then.” The last Sunday before we all went away for the summer, Toni borrowed a few hours’ time from a friend with an apartment in town. I’d quit my job in the lab and taken another in the post office, signed up for computer class, and was trying to stop dreaming about plush-faced monkeys and wild red rats. Toni and I made love until we were too sore to move and then lay naked, sweating into each other’s hips. Toni held my hands, fingering the two scars that remained on my right little finger. After a few minutes she sucked my fingers into her mouth and bit down gently. “Tell me about that fishing camp again.” I could barely understand her, and didn’t want to talk anyway. “No.” “That monkey left her mark on you, didn’t she?” “Only one that ever did.” I looked into her eyes when I said it, knowing what I was saying as much as she did. “Only one, huh? You think that’s just?” I shrugged, my eyes never leaving hers . “There is no justice,” I told her, meaning it, meaning it absolutely. Toni sighed and rolled over. She took a long pull from the half-empty glass of beer she’d left on the floor, and then looked up at me from under her eyebrows. “Tell you what,” she whispered. “I want you to put me in one of your stories sometime.” I took the glass away from her, took a drink myself. “What in the world for?” She took the glass back and turned away from me. “I want to be there,” she said over her shoulder. “I just want to be there, right in there with the monkeys. Me, you understand—raw and drunk and hairy. Me, the way I am. You put me in there, huh? You just put me in there.” Violence Against Women Begins at Home P aula swears that if I joined her yoga class, I would never need another chiropractor in my life. She may be right. Margaret says it’s sex. “Everything is about sex, but a bad back? That’s the worst. It’s the congestion, all that compression and tension. You know, tighter and tighter. You got to have a release, and sex is the thing that’ll do it for you.” I nod and light another Marlboro. Last week, my boss finally told me they were going to have to lay me off the first of next month. I’ve been swinging back and forth from exhilaration to a kind of mad dread since then.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Have the young ladies arrived yet?’ On hearing these words, the lady burst into tears yet again, and begged him to come inside the tower so that she could speak to him. The scholar very politely granted her request, and the lady, lying face downwards on the floor of the roof in such a way that only her head appeared in the aperture, addressed him, weeping plaintively and saying: ‘You have certainly paid me back, Rinieri, for the unpleasant night I caused you to spend, for although we are in the month of July, I was convinced, not having any clothes on, that I was going to freeze to death up here last night. But apart from this I’ve been crying so much over the trick I played on you and over being such a fool as to believe you, that it’s a miracle I have any eyes left in my head. I therefore implore you, not for love of me, whom you have no reason to love, but for your own sake, as a gentleman, to let this suffice by way of revenge for the injury I did you, and bring me my clothes and let me down. Please don’t deprive me of that which you could never restore to me even if you wished, in other words, my good name. For even if I did prevent you from spending one night with me, I can make amends for it whenever you like by letting you spend many another night with me in exchange for that one. Rest content with what you have done. Let it suffice you, as a gentleman, to have succeeded in avenging yourself and making me aware of the fact. Don’t apply your strength against a there woman: the eagle that conquers a dove has nothing to boast about. For the love of God and the sake of your honour, do have mercy on me.’ The scholar, indignantly reflecting on the injury she had done him, and perceiving her tears and her entreaties, was filled with pleasure and sorrow at one and the same time: the pleasure of that revenge which he had desired above all else, and the sorrow engendered by his compassionate nature at the sight of her distress. His compassion being unequal, however, to his craving for revenge, he replied: ‘Madonna Elena, if by my entreaties (albeit I had not the power to flavour them with tears and honeyed words as you do your own) I had succeeded, on the night I spent freezing to death in that snow-filled courtyard of yours, in prevailing upon you to shelter me in any way at all, it would be an easy matter for me now to grant your request.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ith the breaking up of the stables at Morton came the breaking up of their faithful servant. Old age took its toll of Williams at last, and it got him under completely. Sore at heart and gone in both wind and limb, he retired with a pension to his comfortable cottage; there to cough and grumble throughout the winter, or to smoke disconsolate pipes through the summer, seated on a chair in his trim little garden with a rug wrapped around his knees. ‘It do be a scandal,’ he was now for ever saying, ‘and ’er such a splendid woman to ’ounds!’ And then he would start remembering past glories, while his mind would begin to grieve for Sir Philip. He would cry just a little because he still loved him, so his wife must bring Williams a strong cup of tea. ‘There, there, Arth-thur, you’ll soon be meetin’ the master; we be old me and you—it can’t be long now.’ At which Williams would glare: ‘I’m not thinkin’ of ’eaven—like as not there won’t be no ’orses in ’eaven—I wants the master down ’ere at me stables. Gawd knows they be needin’ a master!’ For now besides Anna’s carriage horses, there were only four inmates of those once fine stables; Raftery and Sir Philip’s young upstanding chestnut, a cob known as James, and the aged Collins who had taken to vice in senile decay, and persisted in eating his bedding. Anna had accepted this radical change quite calmly, as she now accepted most things. She hardly ever opposed her daughter these days in matters concerning Morton. But the burden of arranging the sale had been Stephen’s; one by one she had said good-bye to the hunters, one by one she had watched them led out of the yard, with a lump in her throat that had almost choked her, and when they were gone she had turned back to Raftery for comfort. ‘Oh, Raftery, I’m so unregenerate—I minded so terribly seeing them go! Don’t let’s look at their empty boxes—’ 2Another year passed and Stephen was twenty-one, a rich, independent woman. At any time now she could go where she chose, could do entirely as she listed. Puddle remained at her post; she was waiting a little grimly for something to happen. But nothing much happened, beyond the fact that Stephen now dressed in tailor-made clothes to which Anna had perforce to withdraw her opposition. Yet life was gradually reasserting its claims on the girl, which was only natural, for the young may not be delivered over to the dead, nor to grief that refuses consolation. She still mourned her father, she would always mourn him, but at twenty-one with a healthful body, there came a day when she noticed the sunshine, when she smelt the good earth and was thankful for it, when she suddenly knew herself to be alive and was glad, in despite of death.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Now get you hence to shed your tears among the women, and if you think we have earned your cruelty, see that you slaughter us both at one and the same time.’ Although Tancredi knew that his daughter had a will of iron, he doubted her resolve to translate her words into action. So he went away and decided that whilst he would dismiss all thought of venting his rage on Ghismonda, he would cool her ardent passion by taking revenge on her lover. He therefore ordered the two men who were guarding Guiscardo to strangle him noiselessly that same night, after which they were to take out his heart and bring it to him; and they carried out his orders to the letter. Early next day, the Prince called for a fine, big chalice made of gold, and having placed Guiscardo’s heart inside it, he ordered one of his most trusted servants to take it to his daughter, bidding him utter these words as he handed it over: ‘Your father sends you this to comfort you in the loss of your dearest possession, just as you have comforted him in the loss of his.’ After her father had left, Ghismonda, unflinching in her harsh resolve, had called for poisonous herbs and roots, which she then distilled and converted into a potion, so that, if things turned out as she feared, she would have it ready to hand. And when the servant came to her with her father’s gift and recited the message, she accepted it with great composure and removed the lid, no sooner seeing the heart and hearing the servant’s words than she knew for certain that this was the heart of Guiscardo. So she looked up at the servant, and said to him: ‘Nothing less splendid than a golden sepulchre would have suited so noble a heart; in this respect, my father has acted wisely.’ Having spoken these words, she raised it to her lips and kissed it, then continued: ‘Throughout my life, which is now approaching its end, I have had constant reminders of my father’s devoted love, but never so patent a token as this.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen bent over him. ‘Williams, I’m Stephen—don’t you know me? It’s Miss Stephen. You must go straight home and get back to bed—it’s still rather cold on these early spring mornings—to please me, Williams, you must go straight home. Why, your hands are frozen!’ But Williams shook his head and began to remember. ‘Raftery,’ he mumbled, ‘something’s ’appened to Raftery.’ And his sobs and his tears broke out with fresh vigour, so that his niece, frightened, tried to stop him. ‘Now uncle be qui-et I do be-seech ’e! It’s so bad for ’e carryin’ on in this wise. What will auntie say when she sees ’e all mucked up with weepin’, and yer poor nose all red and dir-ty? I’ll be takin’ ’e ’ome as Miss Stephen ’ere says. Now, uncle dear, do be qui-et!’ She lugged the bath-chair round with a jolt and trundled it, lurching, towards the cottage. All the way back down the big north paddock Williams wept and wailed and tried to get out, but his niece put one hefty young hand on his shoulder; with the other she guided the lurching bath-chair. Stephen watched them go, then she turned to the groom. ‘Bury him here,’ she said briefly. 4Before she left Morton that same afternoon, she went once more into the large, bare stables. The stables were now completely empty, for Anna had moved her carriage horses to new quarters nearer the coachman’s cottage. Over one loosebox was a warped oak board bearing Collins’ stud-book title, ‘Marcus,’ in red and blue letters; but the paint was dulled to a ghostly grey by encroaching mildew, while a spider had spun a large, purposeful web across one side of Collins’ manger. A cracked, sticky wine bottle lay on the floor; no doubt used at some time for drenching Collins, who had died in a fit of violent colic a few months after Stephen herself had left Morton. On the window-sill of the farthest loosebox stood a curry comb and a couple of brushes; the comb was being eaten by rust, the brushes had lost several clumps of bristles. A jam pot of hoof-polish, now hard as stone, clung tenaciously to a short stick of firewood which time had petrified into the polish. But Raftery’s loosebox smelt fresh and pleasant with the curious dry, clean smell of new straw. A deep depression towards the middle showed where his body had lain in sleep, and seeing this Stephen stooped down and touched it for a moment. Then she whispered: ‘Sleep peacefully, Raftery.’

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  My grandfather didn’t like pineapple and had every one of the plants dug up. His wealth came from the family’s allotted lands in Indian Territory. In November 1905, before Indian Territory became the State of Oklahoma, a huge oil gusher was discovered on the allotted lands of Ida E. Glenn. This became known as the Glenn Pool. It was the largest oil field in the Southwest. The family lands were part of this oil find. The family became wealthy. My father’s mother, Naomi Harjo, and my aunt Lois Harjo were well educated and received their BFA degrees in art at Oklahoma City University. My aunt Lois Harjo told me that family once owned much of the town of Okmulgee. My grandmother Naomi died of tuberculosis when my father was a small child. My father had to cross a gulf of sadness left by her absence to find a place for my mother, and then me and the rest of his children. His mother was unreachable except by memory. In the end, we must each tend to our own gulfs of sadness, though others can assist us with kindness, food, good words, and music. Our human tendency is to fill these holes with distractions like shopping and fast romance, or with drugs and alcohol. My father’s father, Allen W. Foster, married the caretaker of his children. My father gained stepbrothers and a half-sister. He grew up in a house that became known as the Foster Estate, though it was on his mother’s Creek land. When I was growing up, my father received enough in oil royalties to support his love for fine cars. I remember him taking apart and putting back together his black Cadillac and his Ford pickup. When my father passed from this world, the oil royalties were divided among his children. By the mid-eighties my brothers, sister, and I were each receiving about thirty dollars a month. Then the oil company stopped the payments. Stories can be very demanding and need care and assistance. The family oil story has a spirit and it wants my attention. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] As I continued the journey to enter this realm, I watched my mother and father meet at Casa Loma Dance Hall. My mother was beautiful and magnetic. She was that mix of Cherokee and European that dazzles. She was meticulous in her dress. Her journey to Tulsa took determination on her part. She had to oppose her father, a man who favored her over her six brothers, and set her mother against her. She left her sharecropper family shack with her best friend, Elvira Guerra. They headed to Tulsa with money they made from picking crops. She set herself to mate for life. My father was ephemeral. He was about ten percent body. The other ninety percent of him was spirit and it was often unreachable, even to him. This earth can be difficult and jarring.

• From Trash (1988)

  “I did wonderful things. I did amazing things, and stoned only made me better, made me smoother. Loosened me up and made me psychic. I was doing acid when I got you those gloves. That windowpane Blackie sold us.” “Purple haze. You always talk about the windowpane, but we only did it once. You talk about the windowpane ’cause you like to scare people with the notion of you sticking it in your eyes.” “I only did it once with you. I did it lots with Mickey. We put it in our eyes, in our noses. Son of a bitch even shoved it up my ass.” She crushes the joint out on the bedframe. She is smiling and relaxed now, very beautiful even though I am getting angry. Mickey was the one took her to California after I ran off. Mickey was the one who got her back on junk, left her in the motel room where she overdosed. Mickey was the one threatened me at her memorial service, with his parole officer standing right there sweating in the heat. Mickey was the one I’d told to try it. Come for me, asshole, and I’ll cut off your balls and push them up your butt. The parole officer had smiled, and my sweat had turned cold on my back. That wasn’t like me, wasn’t the kind of thing I’d say. It wasn’t even the thing I’d been thinking. It was as if Katy had pushed the words out of my mouth. It was exactly the kind of thing Katy would have said. But Mickey had overdosed himself at Raiford, and I’d never seen any of Katy’s boyfriends again. Just Katy, anytime she gets restless and wants to come back. I look at her now and my throat closes up. I cannot make casual conversation, cannot talk at all. I want to reach for her but I am too afraid. She is the vampire curse in my life. You have to invite them back, and part of me always wants her, even when most of me don’t. Right now all of me wants her, flesh and blood, body and soul. Katy’s thick black eyebrows raise and lower, seeing right through me, seeing my grief and my lust. “Ahhh, bitch,” she whispers, and it sounds like lover. She slips one hand under the sheet and strokes her nails along my leg. I catch my breath. I could cry but don’t. Will we be lovers again? Is she real enough this moment to put her filmy body along my too-tight muscles? She wants to; it shows in the unaccustomed softness in her face. I feel tears run down my cheeks. Now she says it. “Lover.” “Junkie.” I hiss it at her, beginning to really cry, making a hoarse ugly sound in the quiet room. “Goddamn you, you goddamned junkie!”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘You’re all the son that I’ve got,’ he told her. ‘You’re brave and strong-limbed, but I want you to be wise—I want you to be wise for your own sake, Stephen, because at the best life requires great wisdom. I want you to learn to make friends of your books; some day you may need them, because—’ He hesitated, ‘because you mayn’t find life at all easy, we none of us do, and books are good friends. I don’t want you to give up your fencing and gymnastics or your riding, but I want you to show moderation. You’ve developed your body, now develop your mind; let your mind and your muscles help, not hinder each other—it can be done, Stephen, I’ve done it myself, and in many respects you’re like me. I’ve brought you up very differently from most girls, you must know that—look at Violet Antrim. I’ve indulged you, I suppose, but I don’t think I’ve spoilt you, because I believe in you absolutely. I believe in myself too, where you’re concerned; I believe in my own sound judgment. But you’ve now got to prove that my judgment’s been sound, we’ve both got to prove it to ourselves and to your mother—she’s been very patient with my unusual methods—I’m going to stand trial now, and she’ll be my judge. Help me, I’m going to need all your help; if you fail then I fail, we shall go down together. But we’re not going to fail, you’re going to work hard when your new governess comes, and when you’re older you’re going to become a fine woman; you must, dear—I love you so much that you can’t disappoint me.’ His voice faltered a little, then he held out his hand: ‘and Stephen, come here—look me straight in the eyes—what is honour, my daughter?’ She looked into his anxious, questioning eyes: ‘You are honour,’ she said quite simply. 5When Stephen kissed Mademoiselle Duphot good-bye, she cried, for she felt that something was going that would never come back—irresponsible childhood. It was going, like Mademoiselle Duphot. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot, so foolishly loving, so easily coerced, so glad to be persuaded; so eager to believe that you were doing your best, in the face of the most obvious slacking. Kind Mademoiselle Duphot who smiled when she shouldn’t, who laughed when she shouldn’t, and now she was weeping—but weeping as only a Latin can weep, shedding rivers of tears and sobbing quite loudly. ‘Chérie—mon bébé, petit chou!’ she was sobbing, as she clung to the angular Stephen. The tears ran down on to Mademoiselle’s tippet, and they wet the poor fur which already looked jaded, and the fur clogged together, turning black with those tears, so that Mademoiselle tried to wipe it. But the more she wiped it the wetter it grew, since her handkerchief only augmented the trouble; nor was Stephen’s large handkerchief very dry either, as she found when she started to help.

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

  All things are filled with tears, all are mourning, and on account of the multitudes already dead and still dying, groans are daily heard throughout the city ... There is not a house in which there is not one dead ... After this, war and famine succeeded which we endured with the heathen, but we bore alone those miseries with which they afflicted us ... But we rejoiced in the peace of Christ which he gave to us alone ... Most of our brethren by their exceeding great love and affection not sparing themselves and adhering to one another, were constantly superintending the sick, ministering to their wants without fear and cessation, and healing them in Christ." The heathen, on the contrary, repelled the sick or cast them half-dead into the street. The same self-denying charity in contrast with heathen selfishness manifested itself at Carthage during the raging of a pestilence, under the persecuting reign of Gallus (252), as we learn from Cyprian. Dionysius took an active part in the christological, chiliastic, and disciplinary controversies of his time, and showed in them moderation, an amiable spirit of concession, and practical churchly tact, but also a want of independence and consistency. He opposed Sabellianism, and ran to the brink of tritheism, but in his correspondence with the more firm and orthodox Dionysius of Rome he modified his view, and Athanasius vindicated his orthodoxy against the charge of having sowed the seeds of Arianism. He wished to adhere to Origen’s christology, but the church pressed towards the Nicene formula. There is nothing, however, in the narrative of Athanasius which implies a recognition of Roman supremacy. His last christological utterance was a letter concerning the heresy of Paul of Samosata; he was prevented from attending the Synod of Antioch in 264, which condemned and deposed Paul. He rejected, with Origen, the chiliastic notions, and induced Nepos and his adherents to abandon them, but he denied the apostolic origin of the Apocalypse and ascribed it to the "Presbyter John," of doubtful existence. He held mild views on discipline and urged the Novatians to deal gently with the lapsed and to preserve the peace of the church. He also counselled moderation in the controversy between Stephen and Cyprian on the validity of heretical baptism, though he sided with the more liberal Roman theory.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  And to open that book was to disappear into many dream worlds, like the ones I had left behind after I started school and began to perfect language. The collection was generous in scope and included everyone from Elizabeth Bishop and her spectacular poem “The Fish” to William Blake’s “The Tiger” and the hypnotic lines “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night”; to Emily Dickinson (“I’m nobody! Who are you?”) and Lewis Carroll’s “The Crocodile” (“How doth the little crocodile/Improve his shining tail”). Those poems, taken as a group, summed up my soul at that crucial moment in my personal history. My father was out with girlfriends or coming home drunk and fighting my mother. He was the “tiger, tiger, burning bright.” My parents were in the process of a difficult divorce. My escape was remembering fishing with my grandfather the summer before and the “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow” of the caught fish glittering in the afternoon sunlight. I saw the police come to the house. My father staggered in and out with his belongings, with the smell of other women like strange clouds on his clothes. My mother confided my father’s shortcomings in me and I advised her to leave my father. I felt like I was “nobody—who are you?” My father disappeared. And so did I in this world without father. Emptiness took the place of everything I had known to be true. With the alligators or the crocodile, I could find refuge in another realm below this one. There are underground cities, other peoples. Even though I was the oldest female in my family, I didn’t gather and mother my brothers and sister when my father left. I dove into the other realm, and everyone was left to fend for him- or herself. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] In one of my last childhood memories of my father, I was a brown child wearing one of those dollar-apiece sun suits made of cheap polished cotton that fades after the first wash. It was tied at my shoulders. Two blue-black braids hung down my back. I was sweaty from running; my knees were scraped from jumping and falling. I leaned against my father. I adored him. And I was afraid of him. Together both of those places lived within me. I looked up toward his face and read his lips for mood. I read for love or imminent cruelty. He was laughing and making a joke with his friends. Yeasty beer smell mixed with father sweat. He pulled me to his lap. I heard his heart beating. I tapped the rhythm on his pressed-jean thigh. I was always tapping rhythms. I counted. One, and ah. Two, and ah. Three, and ah. Our heartbeats are numbered. We have only so many allotted. When we use them up, we die. How many did my father have? How many did I have?

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I drew the outline of the Christmas tree. It had to be large, because it needed to hold all the ornaments and lights. Before Daddy had left that morning, he had pulled down the box of Christmas lights and decorations from the hall closet. While the dough was cooling in the icebox so we could make shapes, our mother unwrapped the cotton batting protecting the delicate ornaments. There were shiny, mirrored balls, spirals of icicles, and ropes of tinsel to be wound around the tree. A few prized ornaments were of Wise Men, soldiers, and angels, and my brother and I had to be extra-careful with them. They broke easily. “We decorate to welcome the baby Jesus,” our mother instructed us. “He reminds us to love each other.” Last year at church I was Mary and stood as far away as I could from Joseph, a boy in Sunday school who picked his nose and cried for his mother. The baby Jesus had eyes that rolled back in his head. I refused to pick up the doll and cradle him in adoration. The other kids sang “Away in a Manger” as the parents smiled. What was a manger, anyway? The church people gave us white paper bags of oranges and ribbon Christmas candies. That was my favorite part. My mother awakened me from the floor of the closet where I had fallen asleep. I was dreaming I was with my father in his boat at the lake. We couldn’t move through the water because the lake was frozen. I was getting cold. “It’s snowing, baby,” my mother whispered to me as she carried me to the window. My little brother was asleep, curled up on his cot. He looked like one of the delicate angel ornaments. Baby was sucking her hand as she dreamed and appeared to float in her bassinet. There was still no tree, no father. I felt bad about everything. “I’m sorry, Mama.” “Shush,” she cooed as she wiped the window free of frost. “Look at all the snow.” We looked out together into the shining world. There was magic in the whirling pictures the snow made. In the distance I imagined my father dragging home a tree taller than the house. He called out to my mother and me to open the door as he hefted the trunk to his shoulder to bring it back home in time for Christmas. I was four years old when I woke up with muscle stiffness, headache, and nausea—all the symptoms of polio. The o’ s of the word polio rolled through my mouth like a game of catch. The word sent hushed fear through the voices of my parents as they moved about me, attempting to alleviate my symptoms. My body was a hurting thing. Though I tried, I could not leave my body by will. I heard my mother on the phone with the doctor, her fear tensing the mother-cord between us.

• From Carmina (-50)

  nil mihi tam ualde placeat, Ramnusia uirgo, quod temere inuitis suscipiatur heris. quam ieiuna pium desideret ara cruorem, docta est amisso Laudamia uiro, 80 coniugis ante coacta noui dimittere collum, quam ueniens una atque altera rursus hiems noctibus in longis auidum saturasset amorem, posset ut abrupto uiuere coniugio, quod scibant Parcae non longo tempore abisse, 85 si miles muros isset ad Iliacos. nam tum Helenae raptu primores Argiuorum coeperat ad sese Troia ciere uiros, Troia (nefas) commune sepulcrum Asiae Europaeque, Troia uirum et uirtutum omnium acerba cinis, 90 qualiter et nostro letum miserabile fratri attulit. ei misero frater adempte mihi, ei misero fratri iucundum lumen ademptum, tecum una tota est nostra sepulta domus, omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra, 95 quae tuus in uita dulcis alebat amor. quem nunc tam longe non inter nota sepulcra nec prope cognatos compositum cineris, sed Troia obscena, Troia infelice sepultum detinet extremo terra aliena solo. 100 ad quam tum properans fertur simul undique pubes Graeca penetralis deseruisse focos, ne Paris abducta gauisus libera moecha otia pacato degeret in thalamo. quo tibi tum casu, pulcerrima Laudamia, 105 ereptum est uita dulcius atque anima coniugium: tanto te absorbens uertice amoris aestus in abruptum detulerat barathrum, quale ferunt Grai Pheneum prope Cylleneum siccare emulsa pingue palude solum, 110 quod quondam caesis montis fodisse medullis audit falsiparens Amphitryoniades, tempore quo certa Stymphalia monstra sagitta perculit imperio deterioris heri, pluribus ut caeli tereretur ianua diuis, 115 Hebe nec longa uirginitate foret. sed tuus altus amor barathro fuit altior illo, qui actutum domitum ferre iugum docuit. nam neque tam carum confecto aetate parenti una caput seri nata nepotis alit, 120 qui cum diuitiis uix tandem inuentus auitis nomen testatas intulit in tabulas, impia derisi gentilis gaudia tollens, suscitat a cano uolturium capiti: nec tantum niueo gauisa est ulla columbo 125 compar, quae multo dicitur improbius oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro, quam cum praecipue multiuola est mulier. sed tu horum magnos uicisti sola furores, ut semel es flauo conciliata uiro. 130 aut nihil aut paulo cui tum concedere digna lux mea se nostrum contulit in gremium, quam circumcursans hinc illinc saepe Cupido fulgebat crocina candidus in tunica. quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo, 135 rara uerecundae furta feremus herae, ne nimium simus stultorum more molesti. saepe etiam Iuno, maxima caelicolum, coniugis in culpa flagrantem contudit iram, noscens omniuoli plurima facta Iouis. 140 at, quia nec diuis homines componier aequum est, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ingratum tremuli tolle parentis onus. nec tamen illa mihi dexstra deducta paterna fraglantem Assyrio uenit odore domum, sed furtiua dedit mira munuscula nocte, 145 ipsius ex ipso dempta uiri gremio. quare illud satis est, si nobis is datur unis quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat. hoc tibi, quod potui, confectum carmine munus pro multis, Alli, redditur officiis, 150 ne uestrum scabra tangat rubigine nomen haec atque illa dies atque alia atque alia.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “Wait, wait,” he protested as he stared back at Lewis, who had no idea Herbie was interested in him. But Herbie knew better than to reveal his attraction, and pantomimed his broken heart behind Lewis’s broad back. We found Lupita almost immediately. “Over here,” she called brightly. She waved us into the shadow between the painting and drawing studios, where she was alone. “Okay, Venus,” joked Herbie. “This better be good. I just left the man of my dreams to come and look for you.” Her eyes shined as she pulled a pint of Everclear from under her jacket. “You guys go ahead,” I said. “I’ll sit this one out.” I was trying to be good. It was then that I saw the rough smudge of dirt on Lupita’s jacket, the dainty lace of twigs on her thick black hair, and the bruise decorating her wrist. I thought of Clarence and Lewis walking smugly into the dance. I knew they’d had their way with her. It was more than I could bear. I took a drink, then another. I lost track of time. One minute we were all back in the canteen dancing in a line to “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and then the next we were sitting under the moon out near the ditch with a stranger from town we’d hired to make a liquor run for us. The earth was spinning, and we were spinning with it. We leaned into the burn. Lupita told us about her life, about how her mother had died when she was ten years old and left her with her father. She told how her father would tie her hair up every morning with her mother’s ribbons before they left to work the fields together. Herbie showed us the scar on his back made by a man who beat him and then raped him for his girlish ways. He made it sound funny, but I didn’t laugh. I didn’t say anything: I was numb and flying far away, listening to the whir of the story as it unwound beneath the glowing moon. Herbie disappeared somewhere in the dark, and I could hear him throwing up. Someone was singing round-dance songs. A dog barked far, far away. Lupita had drifted into the bushes for what seemed years when the warning bell sounded from the girls’ dorm. The sky was still spinning, but I willed myself to walk, step by step, to find Lupita, to make it back to the dorm in time. I looked for her through the blur of stars and sadness. I lost her. Without warning I remembered the stacked stones in the quarry on the moon. I saw the unraveling story as it spun through time and space. And I saw what the old man had shown me that I hadn’t been able to recall until now—how each thought and action fueled the momentum of the story, how vulnerable we were to forgetting, all of us.