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 Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as you walked by them. . . . One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it. One saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves . . . [a] dysentery tank in which the remains of a child floated.1 This account is shocking, horrible, and tragic. But why? Because people shouldn’t eat worms? Because people shouldn’t make piles of corpses? We answer yes to these questions because no one should be forced to live in conditions such as those at Bergen-Belsen. And yet we intuitively understand that the wrong being done to these prisoners—these people—was much more significant than just the physical conditions forced upon them. A concentration camp is designed to strip people of their humanity. It’s anti-human. And in the scriptures, anything that’s anti-human is anti-God. Genesis begins with God creating the world and then creating people “in his own image.”2 The Hebrew word for image here is tselem, and it has a specific cultural meaning.3 The stories of Genesis originated in ancient Near Eastern culture, where a king was said to rule in the image of a particular god. The famous King Tut is an Egyptian example of this. His full name was Tutankhamen, which is translated “the living image of [the god] Amon.” The king was seen as the embodiment of a particular god on earth. If you wanted to see what that god was like, you looked at that god’s king. The writer of Genesis makes it clear that in all of creation there is something different about humans.4 They aren’t God, and they aren’t going to become God, but in some distinct, intentional way, something of God has been placed in them. We reflect what God is like and who God is. A divine spark resides in every single human being.5 Everybody, everywhere. Bearers of the divine image.6

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  There is absolute silence, the clank and squeak of the hospital giving way for a moment as an angel passes over, wings beating. The instant passes and the hospital resumes itself, a cart bumps, a nurse calls out loudly, rudely, somewhere down the hall. In the room Coke seethes as I pour it into a glass. Where did you girls go? Why did both of you need to go at once, leaving me here by myself? I get a picture of her long ago, shopping, eating lunch in the mezzanine at McCabe’s, picking out school clothes. Tall and thin in a beautiful suit; lemon meringue pie and coffee. The slide changes and the tufted ears of tiny Mr. Larson click into view. Why did both of you have to go at once? I rise to the occasion. Now-now, I point out, it’s awful close to Christmas to be asking those kinds of questions. Her eyes move past me, over my head, and I feel suddenly the tepid breath of Barnelle. He’s a swashbuckler today, actually wearing one of those head things, like a doctor in the movies. It is a flat metallic disk connected to a band and he lifts it off and shoves it into the pocket of his suitcoat. The hair over the top of his head is a delicate auburn doily. He pats it down, using the palm of his hand, pushing the tattered strands back in place, willing them to stay there. He’s wearing a plastic Santa Claus face on his lapel. He smiles at her, he has always acted as though he loves her and regrets this. He acknowledges me with a tilt of the head, some kind of invisible language that works, lifts her wrist and counts the pulse, corpuscles stepping through from her hand to her arm, one by one, like soldiers heading back to camp. He finishes and says Hello, girls in a sweet, cheerful voice and then pulls the string on his Santa Claus. The nose lights up and beams across the bedcovers. Barnelle is sending us a signal, Santa’s nose twinkling like Mars. It’s four o’clock and I’m ready to do something else for a while. My legs want to walk, my eyes keep finding the window. “I saw Barn-door,” Linda announces. She is back, ready for her shift, standing in the doorway with snow melting on her coat collar. “He was climbing into his gold-plated Cadillac, hightailing it home.” Linda hates Barnelle with a rare enthusiasm, able to tick off his crimes on the fingers of both hands. She passes the plate where the rejected Christmas cookies used to be. “God, you’ll eat anything,” she remarks cheerfully. She’s leaving tracks all over the clean floor, in meandering circles. She’s been wrapping Christmas presents for her kids, I know, and her eyes look better. She crinkles them at me sympathetically. “Was Barn-door open?” she asks. This is rhetorical. Over on the bed the gray eyes are closed.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  Each time this happens I stand her up, dry her off, put fresh blankets underneath her, carry the peed-on blankets down to the basement, stuff them into the washer and then into the dryer. By the time I bring them back upstairs they are needed again. The first few times this happened I found the dog trying to stand up, gazing with frantic concern at her own rear. I praised her and patted her head and gave her treats until she settled down. Now I know whenever it happens because I hear her tail thumping against the floor in anticipation of reward. In retraining her I’ve somehow retrained myself, bustling cheerfully down to the basement, arms drenched in urine, the task of doing load after load of laundry strangely satisfying. She is Pavlov and I am her dog. I’m fine about the vanished husband’s boxes stored in the spare bedroom. For now the boxes and the phone calls persuade me that things could turn around at any moment. The boxes are filled with thirteen years of his pack-rattedness: statistics textbooks that still harbor an air of desperation, smarmy suitcoats from the Goodwill, various old Halloween masks and one giant black papier-mâché thing that was supposed to be Elvis’s hair but didn’t turn out. A collection of ancient Rolling Stones T-shirts. You know he’s turning over a new leaf when he leaves the Rolling Stones behind. What I can’t take are the squirrels. They come alive at night, throwing terrible parties in the spare bedroom, making thumps and crashes. Occasionally a high-pitched squeal is heard amid bumps and the sound of scrabbling toenails. taken to sleeping downstairs, on the blue vinyl dog couch, the sheets slipping off, my skin stuck to the cushions. This is an affront to two of the dogs, who know the couch belongs to them; as soon as I settle in they creep up and find their places between my knees and elbows. I’m on the couch because the dog on the blanket gets worried at night. During the day she sleeps the catnappy sleep of the elderly, but when it gets dark her eyes open and she is agitated, trying to stand whenever I leave the room, settling down only when I’m next to her. We are in this together, the dying game, and I read for hours in the evening, one foot on her back, getting up only to open a new can of beer or take peed-on blankets to the basement. At some point I stretch out on the vinyl couch and close my eyes, one hand hanging down, touching her side. By morning the dog-arm has become a nerveless club that doesn’t come around until noon. My friends think I’m nuts. One night, for hours, the dog won’t lie down, stands braced on her rickety legs in the middle of the living room, looking at me and slowly wagging her tail.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  I realize it took quite a bit of courage for him to come to the house when he did, facing all those women who think he’s the Antichrist. The dogs are crowded against him on the couch and he’s wearing a shirt I’ve never seen before. He’s here to help me get through this. Me. He knows how awful this must be. Awful. He knows how I felt about Chris. Past tense. I have to put my hands over my face for a minute. We sit silently in our living room. He watches the mute television screen and I watch him. The planes and ridges of his face are more familiar to me than my own. I understand that he wishes even more than I do that he still loved me. When he looks over at me, it’s with an expression I’ve seen before. It’s the way he looks at the dog on the blanket. I get his coat and follow him out into the cold November night. There are stars and stars and stars. The sky is full of dead men, drifting in the blackness like helium balloons. My mother floats past in a hospital gown, trailing tubes. I go back inside where the heat is. The house is empty and dim, full of dogs and cigarette butts. The collie has peed again. The television is flickering Special Report across the screen and I turn it off before the pictures appear. I bring blankets up, fresh and warm from the dryer. After all the commotion the living room feels cavernous and dead. A branch scrapes against the house and for a brief instant I feel a surge of hope. They might have come back. And I stand at the foot of the stairs staring up into the darkness, listening for the sounds of their little squirrel feet. Silence. No matter how much you miss them. They never come back once they’re gone. I wake her up three times between midnight and dawn. She doesn’t usually sleep this soundly but all the chaos and company in the house tonight have made her more tired than usual. The Lab wakes and drowsily begins licking her lower region. She stops and stares at me, trying to make out my face in the dark, then gives up and sleeps. The brown dog is flat on her back with her paws limp, wedged between me and the back of the couch. I’ve propped myself so I’ll be able to see when dawn starts to arrive. For now there are still planets and stars. Above the black branches of a maple is the dog star, Sirius, my personal favorite. The dusty rings of Saturn. Io, Jupiter’s moon. When I think I can’t bear it for one more minute I reach down and nudge her gently with my dog-arm. She rises slowly, faltering, and stands over me in the darkness. My peer, my colleague.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “I remember everything: the ring of the phone downstairs, my chenille bathrobe with rows of small pink and white tufts, the flopping of my fleece slippers as I went down the steps to the alcove next to the kitchen where the telephone hung on the wall, the wooden banister so smooth to my hand. I remember thinking that the wood had been worn smooth by all the Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates before me. And then that man’s voice, that stranger trying to be kind as he told me that Allen was dead. I sat for hours staring out the beveled glass of the alcove window. I can still see the rainbow-colored mounds of sooty snow in the side yard.” Countless times during therapy we were to return to the dream of the two texts and the meaning of The Death of Innocence. The loss of her brother marked her for life. Death exploded her innocence forever. Gone were the myths of childhood: justice, predictability, a benevolent deity, a natural order of things, protecting parents, the safety of home. Alone and unshielded against the capriciousness of existence, Irene struggled to attain safety. Allen might have survived, she believed, if he had had the right emergency medical treatment. Medicine beckoned—it offered the only hope of mastery over death, and at Allen’s funeral she suddenly decided to apply to medical school and become a surgeon. Another decision Irene made in the wake of Allen’s death was to have enormous implications for our work in therapy. “I figured out a way to avoid ever getting hurt again: I would never again have such a loss if I never let anyone matter to me.” “How did that decision play out in your life?” “For the next ten years I made no attachments, took no chances. I knew a lot of men, but I broke things off quickly—before they got serious and before I felt anything.” “But then something changed. You married. How did that come about?” “I’ve known Jack since the fourth grade and somehow had always thought he would be the one. Even when he disappeared from my life and married someone else, I knew he’d be back. My brother knew and respected him. I guess you could say my brother anointed Jack.” “So Allen’s approval of Jack permitted you to take the risk of marrying?” “It wasn’t that simple. It took a long, long time, and even then I refused to marry Jack until he promised not to die young on me.” I appreciated Irene’s irony and looked up with a grin to gather in her smile in return. But there was no smile. Irene was not being ironic; she was stone serious.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I Momma and the Meaning of Life Dusk. Perhaps I am dying. Sinister shapes surround my bed: cardiac monitors, oxygen canisters, dripping intravenous bottles, coils of plastic tubing— the entrails of death. Closing my lids, I glide into darkness. But then, springing from my bed, I dart out of the hospital room smack into the bright, sunlit Glen Echo Amusement Park, where, in decades past, I spent many summer Sundays. I hear carousel music. I breathe in the moist, caramelized fragrance of sticky popcorn and apples. And I walk straight ahead —not hesitating at the Polar Bear Frozen Custard stand or the double-dip roller coaster or the Ferris wheel—to take my place in the ticket line for the House of Horrors. My fare paid, I wait as the next cart swivels around the corner and clanks to a halt in front of me. After stepping in and pulling down the guard rail to lock myself snugly into place, I take one last look about me—and there, in the midst of a small group of onlookers, I see her. I wave with both arms and call, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Momma! Momma!” Just then the cart lurches forward and strikes the double doors, which swing open to reveal a black gaping maw. I lean back as far as I can and, before being swallowed by the darkness, call again, “Momma! How’d I do, Momma? How’d I do?” Even as I lift my head from the pillow and try to shake off the dream, the words clot in my throat: “How’d I do, Momma? Momma, how’d I do?” But Momma is six feet under. Stone-cold dead for ten years now in a plain pine casket in an Anacostia cemetery outside Washington, D.C. What is left of her? Only bones, I guess. No doubt the microbes have polished off every scrap of flesh. Maybe some strands of thin gray hair remain—maybe some glistening streaks of cartilage cling to the ends of larger bones, the femur and the tibia. And oh yes, the ring. Nestled somewhere in bone dust must be the thin silver filigree wedding ring my father bought on Hester Street shortly after they arrived in New York, steerage class, from the Russian shtetl half a world away. Yes, long gone. Ten years. Croaked and decayed. Nothing but hair, cartilage, bones, a silver filigree wedding ring. And her image lurking in my memories and dreams. Why do I wave to Momma in my dream? I stopped waving years ago. How many? Maybe decades. Perhaps it was that afternoon over half a century ago, when I was eight and she took me to the Sylvan, the neighborhood movie theater around the corner from my father’s store.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  Carol fixes her shirt, lights one cigarette off another, and I wave good-bye to them from the alley behind my house. Through the bushes, up the back walk, still humming. In the kitchen, two cookies and a long drink of water, up the stairs and into the bedroom. Across the hall my parents sleep peacefully behind their closed door, innocent as children. On the way back from Florida I drive a hundred miles out of my way in order to visit my mother’s grave. Small Illinois town where she grew up; the gas station, body shop, and ice cream parlor are owned by my uncles, on the edge of town a small barren cemetery is full of my dead relatives. My mother’s tombstone is dark granite, on either side of it are pink geraniums, planted by my father. In front, beneath her name, is a coffee can full of wildflowers withering in the sun. Someone has been here before me, an aunt probably, driving past on her way into town from one of the nearby farms. The withering flowers prompt a maudlin scene in which I am both the actor and the audience. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead, a tractor chugs by on the highway, holding up a line of cars. A daughter weeps in the afternoon sunlight, a mother remains silent beneath a load of dirt. Hours later my street appears in front of me, a tall catalpa tree, a child’s scooter, and then the driveway where the husband stands, just off his bike, home from work. “Hi,” he says cordially, putting an arm across my shoulders. And then, “I have a meeting tonight.” His hand looks as white as paste next to my Florida arm. Inside, he goes into the study and closes the door. I hear the long beep of the answering machine as he listens to the messages and then erases them. In bed that night I remain stationary as he toils in the darkness. Afterward, there is silence and the sound of breathing. Next to the bed, my big collie whines in her sleep. Finally, he says quietly, with something in his voice I don’t recognize, “It’s good you’re back.” Tick, tock. Breathe in, breathe out. There is no mercy at this hour of the night, and my own voice sounds strange in the darkness. I’m not , is what I tell him. He rolls over and puts his face in the pillow. Everywhere you turn these days there’s someone crying. Billboards, fence posts, and cows go by at seventy miles an hour, a van honks as we pass it and someone gives us the finger in a friendly manner. We’re caravaning our way to the rock quarries for a swimming party. Three cars and two vans are full of people and beer; I’m riding on back of a motorcycle, driven by my unofficial date, a charming madman named Wally.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  I stop at a department store and join the current of tinkling people, Christmas shoppers. Music rains down and a clerk comes forward to ask if she can help. She has lost the heel to one pump and is trying to compensate by walking on tiptoe with that foot. She leads me to lingerie and begins thumbing patiently through nightgowns on a rack, showing me things. I tell her that it needs to be worn beneath a blouse. This confuses her and she thinks wearily for a second, one finger to her lip, one heel up in thin air. She produces an expensive long-underwear shirt made of raw silk, a tiny pink satin flower on the scooped neckline. I buy it even though I’m not sure anymore why I’m here, what I’m doing. I decide I might as well go back, only two days left. I run into Barnelle in the main lobby, he’s got his small son with him. I feel bad that he can’t get any rest, can’t be left alone for five minutes. He speaks frankly to me while his son attempts to tie his shoes together. He says quite honestly that he has gotten very attached to her and I say I have too, actually. He hugs me then, hard, his arms like a big pair of forceps. He lets go and one hand scans his head, searching out the wandering hairs, laying them flat. I’ve seen him on a bench before, reading X rays and shaking his head, biting his nails. He bends down now and unties the laces before he takes a step, his son disappointed but philosophical. There are Christmas presents waiting at home. The room is darkening, Linda is asleep in the chair, knees drawn up like a shield, hands circling her stockinged feet. I can’t tell what’s happening on the bed until I turn on the light. Her eyes are opened wide, frightened, helpless. You left me, you girls, and here I am in the dark! Darkness has a personality now, a power. I understand this very well, quilted satin pressing down in the velvet blackness, brushing the nose, the face. I turn on all the lights but Linda continues to sleep soundly until I bump her chair with my foot. She stretches her legs out and groans, gives me a dirty look, and I give her one back. I hold two fingers up to remind her of how much longer she needs to keep this up, to pay attention. She holds up one finger, guess which one, to remind me of who’s the oldest, who’s the boss. I would love more than anything to slap her. I go to the cafeteria for a strawberry shake instead, which I can eat in front of her. On the way back up I land in an elevator with ten Christmas carolers.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  He will go through two more rooms, down a set of stairs to a place where she lies. While we linger, rubbing our hands and whispering to each other, the grandson who is minding us watches the wall and chews gum. At this moment we don’t know that downstairs he is working magic, that he will present to us a woman who looks rested. That’s how I will get to see her last, in her pale gray wool suit and pink blouse, her glasses resting on her nose as though she’s just dropped off for a minute; her cheeks will be okay again. The clothes will fit perfectly, as though she hadn’t lost a pound. Before the crowd arrives, when it’s just me and my sister and an aunt, he will reach in his pocket and bring forth the bottle of pins, half gone. Her hands are the only wrong thing. They look strange to me and I can’t figure out why until Linda picks up my hand and shows me: Her wedding ring is on my finger; I forgot she gave it to me. The hands begin to look more normal to me now, and the silence of the room gives way to the breathing of the sisters, the coldness of the kissed hands, and the empty air that says You girls, you girls. Out There It isn’t even eight A.M. and I’m hot. My rear end is welded to the seat just like it was yesterday. I’m fifty miles from the motel and about a thousand and a half from home, in a little white Mazda with 140,000 miles on it and no rust. I’m all alone in Alabama, with only a cooler and a tape deck for company. It’s already in the high 80s. Yesterday, coming up from the keys through Florida, I had a day-long anxiety attack that I decided last night was really heat prostration. I was a cinder with a brain; I was actually whimpering. I kept thinking I saw alligators at the edge of the highway. There were about four hundred exploded armadillos, too, but I got used to them. They were real, and real dead. The alligators weren’t real or dead, but they may have been after me. I’m running away from running away from home. I bolted four weeks ago, leaving my husband to tend the dogs and tool around town on his bicycle. He doesn’t love me anymore, it’s both trite and true. He does love himself, though. He’s begun wearing cologne and staring into the mirror for long minutes, trying out smiles. He’s become a politician. After thirteen years he came to realize that the more successful he got, the less he loved me. That’s how he put it, late one night. He won that screaming match. He said, gently and sadly, “I feel sort of embarrassed of you.” I said, “Of what? The way I look?

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I tell Stella what I’ve told many people who are cherished spouses but famished lovers: “You know he loves you; you’ve never doubted that; and that’s why you’ve stayed all these years. What hurts so much is that you’ve never felt wanted by him. You feel that it’s all on you to make it happen, and indeed it is. You’ve forfeited sensual complicity for emotional security. It’s a cruel bargain.” Like a glacier suddenly melting, tears roll down Stella’s face. They speak volumes about the longing and rejection she’s lived with for so long. It’s virtually impossible not to take such repeated denial personally, to see it as proof that one is undesirable, and to slip into self-doubt. To James I say, “Love and desire are not the same. Cozy is not the same as sexy. Your wife knows you love her. What she wants is to feel desired by you. She wants to know your hunger, to taste the delicate flavors of your craving, and to see it as a match for her own. Your inability to let go, to surrender to your own hedonistic designs, is infuriating to her. Your passivity is irritating, and your considerateness is the opposite of her fantasy of unrestrained rapture. Your lustiness would be an open endorsement for her own ardor. It’s hard to let go with someone who doesn’t.” The masturbation experiment was only a partial success—it went so-so, as these things sometimes do, but there was no dramatic transformation. James’s self-consciousness got the better of him. He had always marshaled masturbation as a private pleasure, and he had no desire to share it. But what happened a few days later was a real turning point. James and Stella had a row. She was upset, convinced that things would never change. His first impulse was to hold her, but he was afraid it wasn’t what she wanted. She seemed so angry with him. But he pushed through his awkwardness and held her anyway. Though she wasn’t responsive at first, he maintained his embrace. In the past, James had always retreated, focusing solely on her cues for readiness. He was organized by her. This time, he made his own choice, laid claim to his own feelings, and was surprisingly aroused. He rubbed her back, and she began to calm down. She knew he was there, and that he could contain her. He could withstand her intensity. One intensity dominoed another, and this led to what they both recounted separately as “wonderful lovemaking.” Theirs wasn’t an ecstatic fulfillment; rather, they reveled in a quiet passion, the simple understanding of two bodies reunited after a long absence.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  A few years ago I was on a trip with a friend, and we had just gotten on the plane and sat down and fastened our seatbelts, and the flight attendant was just about to tell us how to . . . fasten our seatbelts, when my friend leaned over to me and asked, “Remember that business trip I took to the East Coast a few weeks ago? Well, it wasn’t for business. I went to be with this woman I’ve been emailing.” But he wasn’t done. “And remember when my wife went out of town last weekend? I wasn’t alone in my house. The woman I’ve been emailing came and spent the weekend with me.” Where do you go from there, when a friend drops a bomb like that? Needless to say, the trip had a dark cloud over it. I begged him on the return flight to leave the airport and go straight home and be honest with his wife. I promised to help find a counselor to guide them through this mess. But as I was saying goodbye to him, I realized I had a question that was more important than anything we had talked about. I asked him if he wanted to be married to his wife. He said no. As he said no, I had flashbacks of their wedding ceremony, the vows, the “till death do us part” section, all the friends and family who had been there. The dresses, the flowers, the toasts. The kiss. So he went to his home, I went to mine. I had been back probably fifteen minutes when there was a knock at the door. I opened it, and there stood his wife, sobbing. She was trying to talk, but not much was coming out. She came in and sat on the couch between my wife and me, and we put our arms around her and she cried and she cried and she cried. There are a lot of different ways to cry. There’s the “somebody close to you is dying” cry, the “confessing dark secrets” cry, the “I’m angry and want to kill or at least significantly maim someone” cry, the groom’s “my bride is coming down the aisle” cry, the “kid whose feelings have been hurt” cry. There’s the “car accident I could have died in but didn’t” cry. There’s even the “I just hit my thumb with the hammer and it hurts so much but I’m not going to cry, so little tears are forming in the corners of my eyes” cry. But her cry on that day was a kind of crying I have seen many times. It’s the cry of someone who has had their heart broken by a lover. It comes from someplace else. Someplace far inside a person, deep in the soul. It’s a cry with a certain ache. It’s the ache of a broken heart. Behind the Wall

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  May 26, 1926: At Talodi there were complaints, a dispute over two water jars (both parties seemed equally implausible, so it was a doubtful decision, I fear) & a girl with a septic foot. There are many more of these medical problems this time, several shot-gun wounds in the legs, mysteriously—but the Nuba will hang on to their ancient firearms, & there seems little we can do about it. After what has been done to them they deserve some means of self-defence. Today those things in Palme’s book were constantly in my mind, the terrible stories of slavery, mutilation, castration: how they weighed the boys down with sandbags, razored off their balls & patched them up with—melted butter, I think it was. I believe many of them died. And all this going on nearly in my lifetime! The sheer evil of it oppressed my heart as I went through the village, putting things to right, rewarding & punishing & laying down the law. At least our justice is felt to be justice. Even so, these days I halt the lash in mid-air, am ready almost to extend a comradely hand instead. Not to be too friendly—that was poor old Fryer’s constant caveat. There’s a great deal in it—not to be the schoolmaster mocked for his absurdity who only wants to be loved.

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

  I answer that, Penance is twofold, internal and external. Internal penance is that whereby one grieves for a sin one has committed, and this penance should last until the end of life. Because man should always be displeased at having sinned, for if he were to be pleased thereat, he would for this very reason fall into sin and lose the fruit of pardon. Now displeasure causes sorrow in one who is susceptible to sorrow, as man is in this life; but after this life the saints are not susceptible to sorrow, wherefore they will be displeased at, without sorrowing for, their past sins, according to Is. 65:16. “The former distresses are forgotten.” External penance is that whereby a man shows external signs of sorrow, confesses his sins verbally to the priest who absolves him, and makes satisfaction for his sins according to the judgment of the priest. Such penance need not last until the end of life, but only for a fixed time according to the measure of the sin. Reply to Objection 1: True penance not only removes past sins, but also preserves man from future sins. Consequently, although a man receives forgiveness of past sins in the first instant of his true penance, nevertheless he must persevere in his penance, lest he fall again into sin. Reply to Objection 2: To do penance both internal and external belongs to the state of beginners, of those, to wit, who are making a fresh start from the state of sin. But there is room for internal penance even in the proficient and the perfect, according to Ps. 83:7: “In his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears.” Wherefore Paul says (1 Cor. 15:9): “I . . . am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.” Reply to Objection 3: These durations of time are fixed for penitents as regards the exercise of external penance. Whether Penance can be continuous?Objection 1: It would seem that penance cannot be continuous. For it is written (Jer. 31:16): “Let thy voice cease from weeping, and thy eyes from tears.” But this would be impossible if penance were continuous, for it consists in weeping and tears. Therefore penance cannot be continuous. Objection 2: Further, man ought to rejoice at every good work, according to Ps. 99:1: “Serve ye the Lord with gladness.” Now to do penance is a good work. Therefore man should rejoice at it. But man cannot rejoice and grieve at the same time, as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. ix, 4). Therefore a penitent cannot grieve continually for his past sins, which is essential to penance. Therefore penance cannot be continuous. Objection 3: Further, the Apostle says (2 Cor. 2:7): “Comfort him,” viz. the penitent, “lest perhaps such an one be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” But comfort dispels grief, which is essential to penance. Therefore penance need not be continuous.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Modern Art That winter you go to the Brooklyn Museum, to an exhibition called Hide/Seek. You’re in duress, in the city against your will. You did not want to go to New York, even for a few days, but she insisted. You agree to go to the museum because art has always had a balancing effect on your mind; it is a reminder that you are more than a body and its accompanying grief. Inside, you wander ahead of her, far ahead so you don’t have to feel her presence weighing on you like a pillow on the face. You find Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Félix González-Torres, a Cuban American artist. When you first see the installation—a pile of candy wrapped in multicolored cellophane, tucked in a corner—you almost laugh. It is so strangely out of place in this space. But when you get closer and read the description, you understand: it is the weight of the artist’s late lover as he began to die of AIDS. Viewers should take a piece of candy, the description says, and at some point it will be replenished. Someone has been replenishing the lost ones since 1991. In 1991 you were five. You didn’t know you were queer. You were living in a Pennsylvania suburb and you didn’t know what AIDS was. You were muttering stories to yourself. You were resentful of your little brother and had newly welcomed a baby sister, of whom you were also resentful. You were so afraid of balloons you invented a device made of a soda bottle and straw that would keep the latex bladder from being sucked into your lungs. You were all mind; anxiety was your lifeblood, your fuel. You were young. You didn’t know your mind could be a boon and a prison both; that someone could take its power and turn it against you. In the new days of 2012, as you stand in front of the pile of candy you feel a direct line to its hopelessness, rage, grief. You read the placard. “An act of communion.” You pick up one, spin the sweet from its wrapper, and put it in your mouth. At that moment, she appears next to you. “What are you doing?” she hisses. You gesture to the sign, the explanation. She doesn’t look. She gets so close to you it’s like she’s going to kiss your ear, except she’s berating you under her breath, a steady stream of rage and profanity that would be indistinguishable from sweet nothings to a nearby stranger. You can’t look at her. You can’t look away from Ross, who is also Untitled, who is also dead, who will also always be alive, immortal. You suck and suck and suck on the candy, which you’re realizing has no identifiable flavor beyond its sugar, and she’s still telling you you’re the worst, you’re worse than the worst, she can’t believe she brought you here. (This exhibit? This museum? This city? Her bed? You’ll never know.) The candy goes from pebble to ice chip, and then it’s gone—one more step toward Ross’s disintegration. One more step toward resurrection.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  One day, you picked her up, put her by the door, and opened it. “Greta,” you said, “go on! Be free! Run!” She just looked at you with the saddest, most mournful expression. She could have run. The door was open. But it was as if she didn’t even know what she was looking at. Dream House as Modern ArtThat winter you go to the Brooklyn Museum, to an exhibition called Hide/Seek. You’re in duress, in the city against your will. You did not want to go to New York, even for a few days, but she insisted. You agree to go to the museum because art has always had a balancing effect on your mind; it is a reminder that you are more than a body and its accompanying grief. Inside, you wander ahead of her, far ahead so you don’t have to feel her presence weighing on you like a pillow on the face. You find Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Félix González-Torres, a Cuban American artist. When you first see the installation—a pile of candy wrapped in multicolored cellophane, tucked in a corner—you almost laugh. It is so strangely out of place in this space. But when you get closer and read the description, you understand: it is the weight of the artist’s late lover as he began to die of AIDS. Viewers should take a piece of candy, the description says, and at some point it will be replenished. Someone has been replenishing the lost ones since 1991. In 1991 you were five. You didn’t know you were queer. You were living in a Pennsylvania suburb and you didn’t know what AIDS was. You were muttering stories to yourself. You were resentful of your little brother and had newly welcomed a baby sister, of whom you were also resentful. You were so afraid of balloons you invented a device made of a soda bottle and straw that would keep the latex bladder from being sucked into your lungs. You were all mind; anxiety was your lifeblood, your fuel. You were young. You didn’t know your mind could be a boon and a prison both; that someone could take its power and turn it against you. In the new days of 2012, as you stand in front of the pile of candy you feel a direct line to its hopelessness, rage, grief. You read the placard. “An act of communion.” You pick up one, spin the sweet from its wrapper, and put it in your mouth. At that moment, she appears next to you. “What are you doing?” she hisses.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  I tell Stella what I’ve told many people who are cherished spouses but famished lovers: “You know he loves you; you’ve never doubted that; and that’s why you’ve stayed all these years. What hurts so much is that you’ve never felt wanted by him. You feel that it’s all on you to make it happen, and indeed it is. You’ve forfeited sensual complicity for emotional security. It’s a cruel bargain.” Like a glacier suddenly melting, tears roll down Stella’s face. They speak volumes about the longing and rejection she’s lived with for so long. It’s virtually impossible not to take such repeated denial personally, to see it as proof that one is undesirable, and to slip into self-doubt. To James I say, “Love and desire are not the same. Cozy is not the same as sexy. Your wife knows you love her. What she wants is to feel desired by you. She wants to know your hunger, to taste the delicate flavors of your craving, and to see it as a match for her own. Your inability to let go, to surrender to your own hedonistic designs, is infuriating to her. Your passivity is irritating, and your considerateness is the opposite of her fantasy of unrestrained rapture. Your lustiness would be an open endorsement for her own ardor. It’s hard to let go with someone who doesn’t.” The masturbation experiment was only a partial success—it went so-so, as these things sometimes do, but there was no dramatic transformation. James’s self-consciousness got the better of him. He had always marshaled masturbation as a private pleasure, and he had no desire to share it. But what happened a few days later was a real turning point. James and Stella had a row. She was upset, convinced that things would never change. His first impulse was to hold her, but he was afraid it wasn’t what she wanted. She seemed so angry with him. But he pushed through his awkwardness and held her anyway. Though she wasn’t responsive at first, he maintained his embrace. In the past, James had always retreated, focusing solely on her cues for readiness. He was organized by her. This time, he made his own choice, laid claim to his own feelings, and was surprisingly aroused. He rubbed her back, and she began to calm down. She knew he was there, and that he could contain her. He could withstand her intensity. One intensity dominoed another, and this led to what they both recounted separately as “wonderful lovemaking.” Theirs wasn’t an ecstatic fulfillment; rather, they reveled in a quiet passion, the simple understanding of two bodies reunited after a long absence.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  The counselors spent much time in deliberation, and after three days behind closed doors they brought her a squid, with no small amount of pomp and pageantry. She was utterly delighted. The squid was everything she had ever wanted: pearlescent and damp, sinewy and intelligent. The squid, in turn, was delighted with her own new situation. She had, from afar, admired the queen, and could hardly believe the queen had chosen her as her own. At first, their friendship was a magnificent one. They traveled to the edges of the kingdom, and the squid would bring the queen beautiful baubles from tiny sea caves at the coast. The queen took the squid to visit distant dignitaries, and at night they trawled the shadowed halls in search of midnight snacks. It was a companionship defined by its tenderness, and the two were unspeakably happy. But after a while, the queen grew bored with her companion. Those were difficult times. Sometimes the queen left the squid locked outside her study, and the squid would sit upon the dry, cool stones praying she would be returned to her bowl before her skin turned to paper. And even when the queen and the squid kept each other company, the queen was distant, often cruel. She would flip the squid over and drop little pieces of trash into her gnashing beak. And the queen would scrub whatever surface the squid touched, scolding her for her thoughtless messes. (The squid, as you know, has three hearts, and all of them broke over and over in her time with the queen.) One night, when the queen was sleeping, the squid decided to gambol about the palace. She found her way to a mop bucket and wheeled herself around the corridors, enjoying the silence. After she had traveled some distance she found herself at the end of a hallway, before a very strange and heavy door. The squid was about to turn around and leave when she heard something. She opened the door and slid into the dim room. The smell was terrible. Not the organic stench of death but the wine-dark depths of sorrow—thick and bitter. And the sounds—the squid had never heard anything like that before. The low moan of water draining from a bath; keen wails darting through the room like bright birds. The squid’s large eyes began to adjust to the light. When she realized what she was seeing, she wheeled her bucket as quickly as possible back down the hallway and back to the queen’s room. Some time later, the squid looked out the window and saw that the queen was cavorting with a bear. The bear was beautiful: massive and shaggy and radiant. The squid, heartbroken, knew she could not even begin to compare. When the queen and the bear departed for a picnic, the squid asked a chambermaid to take her into town.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  The bear was beautiful: massive and shaggy and radiant. The squid, heartbroken, knew she could not even begin to compare. When the queen and the bear departed for a picnic, the squid asked a chambermaid to take her into town. When the queen discovered that her squid was gone, she was enraged. But once her anger receded, she knew what she needed to do. So the queen sat down and wrote the squid a letter. “My dearest creature,” she wrote. “Before I begin, I must ask you to keep an open mind and an open heart about the following missive. “I love you, and I will always love you. The fact that you refuse to come to my chambers, even just as a companion and not as a lover, stills my heart. You seem to believe that the fact that our love has ended means we can never be in proximity to each other, and I beg you to reconsider. I have loved many creatures in my lifetime—a goat, a honeybee, an owl—and despite the fact that our love did not endure, I still see them regularly. We are still friends. Just because I have found happiness in the companionship of a bear does not mean that our time together meant nothing. “I am sorry that things did not work out between us. I have, as I hope you would agree, behaved honorably and beyond reproach. I am filled with grief and sorrow that you do not believe in amicable partings. I would have thought that you—intelligent creature that you are— would know better. “The truth is that you have been with me during a very difficult period of my life, and I am sorry that I have not been on my best behavior. But such is love! What we have will transcend this messy business, and we will be in each other’s lives forever. Does that not please you? None of this jealousy or betrayal; just a friendship based on mutual trust. I hope one day we can meet each other in some neutral space, our pain limned with understanding, with all of this behind us. I faithfully await your reply.” When the squid did not reply, the queen wrote another letter: “Sweet squid! The mistakes that I have made number in the thousands, I think. I have spent many days meditating, fasting, abstaining from alcohol, and am now realizing how profoundly I failed you. The truth is, you are my past and my future. I miss you. I wish I could

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Think about some of the great country songs, the classics. There’s “She Ripped My Heart Out and Stomped That Sucker Flat,” and there’s “I Sure Do Miss Him, but My Aim Is Improving,” and then there’s my personal favorite, “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.” What do they have in common? Heartbreak. Someone got their heart broken by someone else. And now they are singing about it. And we can all relate. Even if the music gives us a rash.4 Why is this? And why is it that it’s not just about lovers, it’s about parents and their children, friends who have been hurt by friends, business partners who part ways. Why is heartbreak so universal? It’s universal because we’re feeling something as old as the world. Something God feels. The Bible begins with God making people who have freedom. Freedom to love God or not to love God. And these people consistently choose not to love God. It’s written in Genesis 6:6 that God “regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” Another translation reads, “Then YHWH [God] was sorry that he had made humankind on earth, and it pained his heart.” These ancient writers saw God as having a heart.5 That feels. That responds. That hurts. That fills with pain. God . . . grieving. And what is the source of this grieving? People. People God had made who have freedom. Freedom to love anybody they want. And freedom not to love anybody they want. God takes this giant risk in creating and loving people, and in the process God’s heart is broken. Again and again and again. Divine heartbreak. For some, this is an entirely new perspective on God. Many of the popular images of God are of a warrior, a creator, a judge, a system of theology, a set of absolute truths, a father, the writer of an owner’s manual. But a lover? A lover whose heart has been crushed, and expresses it in . . . poetry?6 This raises questions about what is at the base of the universe. What, or maybe we should say who, is behind it all? A list of rules? A set of beliefs, which you either believe or you don’t, and if you do, you’re in, if you don’t, you’re out? A harsh judge and critic, who’s making a list and checking it all the time? An impersonal energy such as fate, destiny, luck, chance, or the force that you can tap into if you know the code or the technique or the philosophy?7 The story the Bible tells is of a living being who loves and who continues to love even when that love is not returned. A God who refuses to override our freedom, who respects our power to decide whether to reciprocate, a God who lets us make the next move. Love Is . . .

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  180 Lecture 41: Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem Akhmatova, Requiem. Amert, In a Shattered Mirror. Driver, Anna Akhmatova. 1. As you read the cycle, pay particular attention to the religious images and allusions. What is the function of these references? Is the poet suggesting a religious solace in a literal way or must the cycle be read in a metaphoric way, indicating that whatever comfort there is will have to come from someplace other than religion? How do we decide on the basis of the poem itself how we should read and understand the references? 2. The poems are also full of what is sometimes called intertextuality: references and allusions to a lot of other literature, Russian as well as non-Russian. How many other references to other literature can you discover, remembering that some of the references to Russian history and landscape are also references to literary works? How, besides providing a partial cover for the poet, do they function in the poems? Essential Reading Supplementary Reading Questions to Consider 181 Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country Lecture 42 Since our … lecture … on Marcel Proust, we’ve been exploring reactions against Realism in the early 20th century. … This time, [we’ll] look at another modernist ¿ gure, Kawabata Yasunari, and one of his most famous novels called Snow Country. … written in the 1930s, and … published in its ¿ nal form in 1947. I n Snow Country Kawabata Yasunari uses avant-garde techniques that came to Japan from Western literature. When Japanese writers ¿ rst adapted Western techniques for their own works, the most fashionable and up-to-date mode in the West was that of Realism, as we saw in the work of Higuchi Ichiy ǀ. During the 1930s and 1940s, when Snow Country was written and published, many of the “isms” mentioned in past lectures (e.g., Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Dadaism) made their mark on the novel genre in the West—and therefore had an impact on the Japanese novel as well. Kawabata admitted to being much in À uenced by James Joyce’s Ulysses and by the theories of Sigmund Freud. He belonged to a group of young Japanese writers called “New Sensibilities,” whose aim was to rescue Japanese writing from Realism and Naturalism. Around the turn of the 20 th century, Henry James had established that every story is somebody’ s story, so that ¿ rst- or third-person limited point of view had become normative for the psychological Realist novel. In keeping with this Jamesian in À uence, Kawabata’s novel uses a third-person limited point of view, which means that all of our information comes to us through its protagonist, Shimamura. We are inside his head for the entire book, which means that everything we learn has already been colored by his temperament and sensibility. In novels of this sort, we have to get to know our protagonist and his sensibility well enough to make adjustments for his biases and proclivities—a particular issue in this novel because of the nature of Shimamura.