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 Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Who can relate the suffering of Ugolino, count of Pisa? There was a dark tower, a little way out of the city, to which he was consigned. He was imprisoned there with his three children, the oldest of whom was only five years old. What cruel Fortune shut these little birds within a cage? He was destined to die in that prison. The bishop of Pisa, Roger Ubaldini, had borne false witness and had stirred up the people against him; so Ugolino was confined, with so little meat and drink that he despaired of his life. There was a certain time each day when the gaoler brought his food into the cell. Ugolino was waiting for him at that time when, suddenly, he heard the great door of the tower closing. He heard the sound clearly, but he said not a word to his children. But he knew in his heart that they would all now starve to death. ‘I wish that I had never been born,’ he said to himself. And he wept. His youngest son, three years old, crept upon his lap. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? When will the gaoler bring us our food? Do you not have any bread for us? I am so hungry that I cannot sleep. I wish that I could sleep for ever. Then I would never be hungry! Please give me bread!’ So the poor child grew weaker and weaker each day. Eventually he climbed into his father’s lap and whispered to him, ‘Farewell, Father. I must go now.’ The little boy kissed him on the cheek, laid down his head, and died. When Ugolino saw that his son was dead he gnawed his arms with grief, lamenting the faithlessness of Fortune. ‘I am bound upon the wheel,’ he said. His two surviving children were convinced that he was gnawing on his flesh out of hunger rather than grief. The eldest of them implored him. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘do not eat your own flesh. Eat us, instead. You gave us life. You have the right to take it from us. Our flesh is yours.’ Within a day or two, both of the little boys were dead. In his despair Ugolino also laid down and died. So ended the life of the mighty count of Pisa, drawn down into grief from high estate. If you wish to read more about this tragedy, you will find it in the pages of the great poet of Italy known as Dante. He has written a detailed account of the last days of Ugolino. His words will live for ever. Nero The emperor Nero was as great a fiend as any that dwells in hell. Yet, as Suetonius tells us in his Lives of the Caesars, he was the master of the world, from east to west and from north to south. His robes were of the purest white silk, and were covered with fine jewels. He delighted in diamonds and in sapphires.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  When they were led before the image of the god they refused to make any sacrifice to it. They declined to bow down before it or offer incense to the idol. Instead they fell to their knees and prayed to the true God. So they were beheaded on the spot, and their souls rose into heaven. Maximus was present at their execution, and afterwards related that he had seen the souls of the two saints ascending to paradise in the company of bright angels. He wept many times as he told this story to others, but his tears converted them all to the true faith. When he heard of this, Almachius ordered that he should be whipped to death with cords of lead. Saint Cecilia then took up his body and buried it beside the graves of Valerian and Tiburce, where they shared a simple stone. But then Almachius struck. He ordered that the virgin should herself be taken to the temple of Jupiter, where she would be obliged to venerate the idol with incense. But the officers of his court had been converted by her preaching. They wept aloud, and proclaimed their belief in the Christian faith. ‘We believe that Christ is the son of God,’ they told him. ‘We believe that He was God in human form. We know this to be true. The holy maid is His servant. We swear to this, even if we are condemned to death.’ When the prefect of the city heard of these things, he ordered that Cecilia should be brought before him. He asked her first about her rank and degree. ‘I was born and raised a gentlewoman, ’ she told him. ‘Now let me know this,’ Almachius replied. ‘What religion do you espouse? What are your beliefs?’ ‘That is a foolish question, sir. You are asking me two things at once. That’s silly.’ ‘Why are you so impudent to me?’ Almachius asked her. ‘Why? Because I have a clear conscience. Because I have come here in good faith.’ ‘Do you have no respect for my power?’ ‘Your power is very small. The authority of any man is no more than a bladder filled with wind. The point of a pin will puncture it. Then there is nothing.’ ‘You began in the wrong tone. Now you are being offensive. Do you not know that the rulers of the land have ordained that all Christians will be arrested and punished. But, if they renounce their so-called faith, they will escape any penalty?’ ‘Your rulers are mistaken. You and the other nobles are also wrong. You make us guilty by passing a foolish law. You know very well that we are innocent of any crime. We are Christians, who honour the name of Christ. That is all. Where is our offence? We will never renounce the cause that we know to be true and just.’ ‘You have a choice,’ Almachius replied. ‘Renounce your faith or suffer death. There is no other way.’

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 19 3/23/2011 Army. Like I was really, for the first time other than being super involved in my family, I was involved in something else. Like I rolled up my sleeves and I wanted to be a part of this. The AIDS ward was a, it was a terrible and beautiful place at the same time. My primary role was to be one of the Shanti counselors there, which was someone who is trained to be able to sit and be and witness and have conversations and support people through their process there. I worked with people there who were like eighteen years old. We had people there who were in their sixties. But in general, they were sexually active, gay men. People were coming into the hospital with diseases like toxoplasmosis, which you can get from a potted plant or a canary cage. I mean, people were extremely susceptible to any number of things. So there had to be like a controlled environment. There was this idea that we were there to cure and heal and- and not to minimize any of that, but- but- but really, back then what people were doing is they were dying of AIDS, and we were trying to help them as best we could. You could go a couple days, and uh, no one would die. And then in one day, like six people would die. We saw many l- lover couples come in. One would die. The other, you know, the partner would be there, go through the whole process. Some time would pass, and then the next lover would come in. There was a mom who came to five-A, and one, two, three times she lost her boys there. I would stand in the hallway, a gay man myself in my mid-thirties, visiting and talking to a mother and father who had just stepped out of a room, who had just found out that their son had pneumocystis and had three months to live or whatever. And the father would stand there and go, “You know, (smacks lips) it’s harder for me to find out that my son is a fag than to find out that he’s gonna be dyin’ soon.” And there I would be, like trying to comfort him. 1:45:23 DANIEL (VO/ON) When Steve died, my friends were there for me. I felt so supported. My family was very, very much there for me. Also, I had other friends who were sick, and so I r- It pulled me out of myself ‘cause I could go help take care of them. And I think I mentioned Peter, who was one of my (sighs) dearest friends. He’s one of the first people I met when I moved to San Francisco. He was tall and handsome and grew up in a trailer park, and he was-- He called him-- He- he used to keep these diaries, and he always wanted them published after he died as Diaries of

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 37 3/23/2011 2:24:55 ED (VO/ON) You know, it’s like the AIDS epidemic is not over. I still have friends who are living with HIV. Every once in a while, someone I know becomes infected. I mean, it continues. What has stopped continuing, at least in San Francisco and in most of the- of the developed world, is the- the- the vast amount of sickness and death. I would really like to be able to live long enough to know like how does the epidemic actually come to an end. Like will the treatments come and- and finally and effectively stop people from becoming sicker? And- and will the vaccine come and- and stop people from being able to transmit and acquire it? And- and will it all just finally, finally just stop? 2:26:03 DANIEL You know, when people say how did you get through it, it’s like I don’t know. You know, you just do, and everybody does. I mean, anybody who’s got cancer or AIDS, and there’s like, oh, you’re-- You know, so amazing you’ve- you’ve gotten through this. It’s like, do I have a choice? You know, I want to stay alive and I’m gonna take care of myself the best I can. And you just do it. And it’s not heroic. You just do it. And same thing with losing a partner. It’s, you know, so many, you know-- Most people in the world lose partners, you know, at one time in their lives or another. And you just- you live through it, and it’s horrible, but you do live through it. I know I have so many friends who died so young. That’s-- I mean, that’s-- That, to me, is the most painful part. Wh- what would the world be like now if they were alive? It would be different. It would be very different. Um, so many powerful people, talented people (sighs)… I miss. (sighs) I miss a lot of them. A lot. 2:27:31 CLOSING CREDITS We Were Here Produced and directed by David Weissman Editor/ co-director Bill Weber Director of Photography Marsha Kahm WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 38 3/23/2011 Location Sound Lauretta Molitor Music Holcombe Waller In Order of Appearance: Ed Wolf Paul Boneberg Daniel Goldstein Guy Clark Eileen Glutzer Additional Music Doug Hilsinger Post Production Supervisor Bill Weber Audio Post-Production James LeBrecht - Berkeley Sound Artists Color Correction Gary Coates Project Consultants Irene Taylor Brodsky Gail Silva Post Production Services Spy Post Video Arts Camera and Lighting Equipment Robert Dockendorff Archival Research Gerard Koskovich Elizabeth Pepin Silva Archival Support Alex Cherian San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive Rebekah Kim

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

  "Intelligence of my wife’s death has perhaps reached you before now. I do what I can to keep myself from being overwhelmed with grief. My friends also leave nothing undone that may administer relief to my mental suffering. When your brother left, her life was all but despaired of. When the brethren were assembled on Tuesday, they thought it best that we should join together in prayer. This was done. When Abel, in the name of the rest, exhorted her to faith and patience, she briefly (for she was now greatly worn) stated her frame of mind. I afterwards added an exhortation, which seemed to me appropriate to the occasion. And then, as she had made no allusion to her children, I, fearing that, restrained by modesty, she might be feeling an anxiety concerning them, which would cause her greater suffering than the disease itself, declared in the presence of the brethren, that I should henceforth care for them as if they were my own. She replied, ’I have already committed them to the Lord.’ When I replied, that that was not to hinder me from doing my duty, she immediately answered, ’If the Lord shall care for them, I know they will be commended to you.’ Her magnanimity was so great, that she seemed to have already left the world. About the sixth hour of the day, on which she yielded up her soul to the Lord, our brother Bourgouin addressed some pious words to her, and while he wag doing so, she spoke aloud, so that all saw that her heart was raised far above the world. For these were her words: ’O glorious resurrection! O God of Abraham, and of all our fathers, in thee have the faithful trusted during so many past ages, and none of them have trusted in vain. I also will hope.’ These short sentences were rather ejaculated than distinctly spoken. This did not come from the suggestion of others, but from her own reflections, so that she made it obvious in few words what were her own meditations. I had to go out at six o’clock. Having been removed to another apartment after seven, she immediately began to decline. When she felt her voice suddenly failing her she said: ’Let us pray; let us pray. All pray for me.’ I had now returned. She was unable to speak, and her mind seemed to be troubled. I, having spoken a few words about the love of Christ, the hope of eternal life, concerning our married life, and her departure, engaged in prayer. In full possession of her mind, she both heard the prayer, and attended to it. Before eight she expired, so calmly, that those present could scarcely distinguish between her life and her death. I at present control my sorrow so that my duties may not be interfered with. But in the meanwhile the Lord has sent other trials upon me, Adieu, brother, and very excellent friend. May the Lord Jesus strengthen you by His Spirit; and may He support me also under this heavy affliction, which would certainly have overcome me, had not He, who raises up the prostrate, strengthens the weak, and refreshes the weary, stretched forth His hand from heaven to me. Salute all the brethren and your whole family.

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

  Others are Gregory of Nyssa, who, however, wrote an enthusiastic eulogy of the unmarried life, and lamented his loss of the crown of virginity; and Synesius († about 430), who, when elected bishop of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, expressly stipulated for the continuance of his marriage connection.433 Socrates, whose Church History reaches down to the year 439, says of the practice of his time, that in Thessalia matrimonial intercourse after ordination had been forbidden under penalty of deposition from the time of Heliodorus of Trica, who in his youth had been an amatory writer; but that in the East the clergy and bishops voluntarily abstained from intercourse with their wives, without being required by any law to do so; for many, he adds, have had children during their episcopate by their lawful wives.434 There were Greek divines, however, like Epiphanius, who agreed with the Roman theory. Justinian I. was utterly opposed to the marriage of priests, declared the children of such connection illegitimate, and forbade the election of a married man to the episcopal office (A.D. 528). Nevertheless, down to the end of the seventh century, many bishops in Africa, Libya, and elsewhere, continued to live in the married state, as is expressly said in the twelfth canon of the Trullan council; but this gave offence and was forbidden. From that time the marriage of bishops gradually disappears, while marriage among the lower clergy continues to be the rule. This Trullan council, which was the sixth ecumenical435 (A.D. 692), closes the legislation of the Eastern church on the subject of clerical marriage. Here— to anticipate somewhat—the continuance of a first marriage contracted before ordination was prohibited in the case of bishops on pain of deposition, but, in accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, allowed in the case of presbyters and deacons (contrary to the Roman practice), with the Old Testament restriction, that they abstain from sexual intercourse during the season of official service, because he who administers holy things must be pure.436 The same relation is thus condemned in the one case as immoral, in the other approved and encouraged as moral; the bishop is deposed if he retains his lawful wife and does not, immediately after being ordained, send her to a distant cloister; while the presbyter or deacon is threatened with deposition and even excommunication for doing the opposite and putting his wife away. The Western church, starting from the perverted and almost Manichaean ascetic principle, that the married state is incompatible with clerical dignity and holiness, instituted a vigorous effort at the end of the fourth century, to make celibacy, which had hitherto been left to the option of individuals, the universal law of the priesthood; thus placing itself in direct contradiction to the Levitical law, to which in other respects it made so much account of conforming. The law, however, though repeatedly enacted, could not for a long time be consistently enforced.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Science itself was implicated in the eugenic experiments carried out there. The modern idolatry of nationalism had so idealized the German volk that there was no place for the Jews: born of the new “scientific” racism, the Holocaust was the ultimate in social engineering in what has been called the modern “garden culture,” which simply eliminated weeds—the supreme, perverted example of rational planning in which everything is subordinated to a single, clearly defined objective. 38 Perhaps the Holocaust was not so much an expression as a perversion of Judeo-Christian values. 39 As atheists had been eager to point out, the symbol of God had marked the limit of human potential. At the heart of the Nazi ideology was a romantic yearning for a pre-Christian German paganism that they had never properly understood, and a negation of the God who, as Nietzsche had suggested, put a brake on ambition and instinctual “pagan” freedom. The extermination of the people who had created the God of the Bible was a symbolic enactment of the death of God that Nietzsche had proclaimed. 40 Or perhaps the real cause of the Holocaust was the ambiguous afterlife of religious feeling in Western culture and the malignant energies released by the decay of the religious forms that had channeled them into more benign, productive outlets. 41 In Christian theology, hell had traditionally been defined as the absence of God, and the camps uncannily reproduced the traditional symbolism of the inferno: the flaying, racking, whipping, screaming, and mocking; the distorted bodies; the flames and stinking air all evoked the imagery of hell depicted by the artists, poets, and dramatists of Europe. 42 Auschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred is lost and the human being—whoever he or she may be—is no longer revered as an inviolable mystery . The Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel believed that God died in Auschwitz. During his first night in the camp, he had watched the black smoke curling into the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were being consumed. “Never shall I forget those moments,” he wrote years later, “which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” 43 He relates how one day the Gestapo hanged a child with the face of a “sad-eyed angel” who was silent and almost calm as he climbed the gallows. It took the child nearly an hour to die in front of the thousands of spectators who were forced to watch. Behind Wiesel, one of the prisoners muttered: “Where is God? Where is He?” And Wiesel heard a voice within him saying in response: “Where is He?

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  The story goes on. Jesus is buried, and they put a guard at the tomb. Near the end of this text is probably the most spectacular passage that we find in the Gospel of Peter, an actual account of Jesus’s coming out of the tomb. You don’t find this in any of the Gospels of the New Testament, but here, we have an account of Jesus actually being shown emerging from the tomb. They have the guards standing around the tomb, and they see the heavens Open up, and two men descend from heaven. They go into the tomb. The stone has rolled away by itself from the tomb, so they can go in. They go in, and everybody is watching. Out of the tomb emerge three people, two of whom have their heads reaching up to the sky, supporting a third person whose head reaches up above the sky. Following the three individuals coming out of the tomb (so this is obviously Jesus, the extra tall one, and the two angels) comes the cross: “And they heard a voice speaking from the heavens: “Have you preached to those who are sleeping?’ Obediently, a voice was heard from the cross: ‘Yes.’” Here we have a cross that is walking and talking to the voice in the sky, the cross of the Gospel of Peter. Well, it goes on to say that they then ascend into heaven. The Jewish leaders are disturbed, because everybody now is going to know that Jesus has been raised, and they were at fault for killing him. They devise the lie that the disciples stole the body. The disciples themselves are grief-stricken, and at the very end, the narrative reverts to first person: “We, the twelve disciples of the Lord, wept and were stricken with grief. Grieving at what happened, we returned to our own homes, but I, Simon Peter, and Andrew, my brother [“I, Simon Peter’ —this is somebody writing the Gospel in the name of Peter] took up our nets, and went to the sea, and with us was Levi, the son of Alpheus, whom the Lord...” That’s where the text ends. We don’t know what happens next, but it sounds like what is going to happen next is an account of Jesus’s appearance to the disciples while they fish in the sea, something like is found in John, chapter 21.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 20 3/23/2011 a Illiterate Homosexual. (laughs) Peter was such an original. He was just amazing. He died two weeks after Steve. He had moved back here to die. He and his lover. I had introduced he and his lover, George, and then they moved to Rhode Island where George was from. And then when Peter started getting sick, they moved back to San Francisco ‘cause care was better and their core group of friends was here. And Peter was getting sicker and sicker, and they told him, you know, you have like four or five days to live, and he was just in so much discomfort that he decided to take his own life. So we, you know, we got together all the- the drugs and the cocktail that was gonna kill him, and we had a party at his house. He was in bed, sort of like a- like a queen sit-- you know, holding court. And we each got to go up and say our goodbyes. And I remember him saying, “You know, when I was single, you were married, and when I was married, you were single. Do you think if we’d both been single at the same time, we would have been partners?” And I said, “Yeah, I know we would have been.” And then he gave me one of the most passionate kisses (chuckles) I’ve ever had in my life. (sighs) And then we all went away. (sighs) 1:48:18 EILEEN (VO/ON) I was the charge nurse in the medical clinic, and we were starting the first AZT trials, and Doctor Jay had come on to help that. And he looked at me one day, and he said, “I think we could do this. We could do clinical research.” And so we started the Quest Clinical Research Center together. You know, both of us had never done research. We just kinda did it. You know, back then there weren’t as many um, regulations. The reason that you wanted to do research back then was because there was nothing. And all you were doing was helping people die, and you just felt like you had to work on these trials and, you know, figure out what was working, figure out what the problems were and get these drugs approved so that everybody could have ‘em. By doing this and working really hard and getting these drugs on the market, you know, maybe we could save lives. In the early days, I would go to people’s houses. They were too sick to come in to get their medicine, I’d go to their house. I’d draw their blood. They would come in very educated, wanting the newest treatment. Sometimes they would know more than I did ‘cause they had, you know, researched so much. And um, I would learn from them. There was

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The next morning, just before dawn, the phone rang. In the dark I groped for it. Hello? “Buck?” “Who’s this?” “Buck, it’s Ed Campbell... down at Bank of California.” “Bank of Cal—?” Calling in the middle of the night? Surely I was having a bad dream. “Damn it, we don’t bank with you anymore—you threw us out.” He wasn’t calling about money. He was calling, he said, because he’d heard Pre was dead. “Dead? That’s impossible. We just saw him race. Last night.” Dead. Campbell kept repeating this word, bludgeoning me with it. Dead dead—dead. Some kind of accident, he murmured. “Buck, are you there? Buck?” I fumbled for the light. I dialed Hollister. He reacted just as I had. No, it can’t be. “Pre was just here,” he said. “He left in fine spirits. I’ll call you back.” When he did, minutes later, he was sobbing. AS BEST ANYONE could tell, Pre drove Shorter home from the party, and minutes after dropping Shorter off he’d lost control of his car. That beautiful butterscotch MG, bought with his first Blue Ribbon paycheck, hit some kind of boulder along the road. The car spun high into the air, and Pre flew out. He landed on his back and the MG came crashing down onto his chest. He’d had a beer or two at the party, but everyone who saw him leave swore that he’d been sober. He was twenty-four years old. He was the exact age I’d been when I left with Carter for Hawaii. In other words, when my life began. At twenty-four I didn’t yet know who I was, and Pre not only knew who he was, the world knew. He died holding every American distance record from 2,000 meters to 10,000 meters, from two miles to six miles. Of course, what he really held, what he’d captured and kept and now would never let go of, was our imaginations. In his eulogy Bowerman talked about Pre’s athletic feats, of course, but insisted that Pre’s life and his legend were about larger, loftier things. Yes, Bowerman said, Pre was determined to become the best runner in the world, but he wanted to be so much more. He wanted to break the chains placed on all runners by petty bureaucrats and bean counters. He wanted to smash the silly rules holding back amateur athletes and keeping them poor, preventing them from realizing their potential. As Bowerman finished, as he stepped from the podium, I thought he looked much older, almost feeble. Watching him walk unsteadily back to his chair, I couldn’t conceive how he’d ever found the strength to deliver those words. Penny and I didn’t follow the cortege to the cemetery. We couldn’t. We were too overwrought. We didn’t talk to Bowerman, either, and I don’t know that I ever talked to him thereafter about Pre’s death. Neither of us could bear it. Later I heard that something was happening at the spot where Pre died.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 10 3/23/2011 1:20:27 EILEEN (VO/ON) (CONT’D) People would come in with Kaposi’s Sarcoma. There might be one little lesion or two little lesions, then they would grow. And maybe a lesion would cut off circulation in their leg, and their leg would balloon up. Or maybe it would get into their lung, and they couldn’t breathe, and maybe they would just waste away. 1:20:49 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) a Plague That’s Killing Gays Gay Disease Syndrome 1:20:50 PAUL (VO/ON) Very early, certainly within the first eighteen months, I assumed that a number of our- my friends were- were likely infected and probably myself and uh, and all the people in my group were infected. 1:21:45 EILEEN (VO/ON) From the beginning, I just couldn’t stand the homophobia and the prejudice that was going on. And the fear. There was incredible fear, right, that these people were coming in and dying, and nobody knew what it was, and people get afraid. There were people who were afraid to go into rooms, and so I found myself going into the rooms. If you are not a family member, they wouldn’t talk to you. So if somebody’s partner was in there, the doctors might not explain to them what was going on. So I found myself talking to them. It was a weird time in the hospital because they didn’t want to be associated as an AIDS hospital because no one would want to come to the hospital if they knew we were an AIDS hospital. So there was a lot of struggle there. I remember my mom. (chuckles) She was saying, “why do you have to do this?” You know, ‘cause I’ve already put my mom through lots of stuff, and I remember saying to her, “Mom, it didn’t choose uh-- I didn’t choose it, it chose me.” ‘Cause you’re there, and this terrible thing is happening and you’re a nurse and you can help. And sometimes that’s just helping somebody die, but I, you know, I couldn’t turn my back to it. 1:23:20 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on obituary) Todd Coleman 1:23:22 ED (VO/ON) Something was happening. That these gay men were showing up at places like United Way, looking for a support group or um, uh, social services because they had no m-- They had no family.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “You see I was an orphan,” and then remembering her father who threw her out: “I had lived with my aunt and uncle and called them my father and mother—and it was my uncle who threw me out, the same uncle who Raped me when I was eight years old and I screamed it hurt so and my aunt said forget it, it would go away (she was a degenerate).... And each time I close my eyes, I see those goddam wheels going round, round, round—and I hear that tune they were playing when I met him. (’Put your little foot’),” she hummed.... “And it won’t stop until I hear the crash! ... Oh!” (So Miss Destiny lones it to Washington D.C. where she makes it with men who think shes Real. And when they reach That Point in the cramped car she must insist on, she will say no honey not that, I have got the rag on—she will of course be welltaped. “But thats no reason why we cant have a swinging time anyway.” And if not she will say shes underage and threaten to scream rape. (And dont ask how, Or If, she always got away with it.) But a jealous bartender, who Knows, tells three sailors who want to make it with her that shes not a fish, shes a fruit, and the sailorboys wait outside for her, mean, and start to tear off her beautiful dress and say, If youre a girl wow the world is yours honey, but if youre a goddam queer start praying.... And oh Miss Destiny runs as you will begin to think she is always doing, and they grab her roughly as you will begin to think they are always doing, and she rushes into the street and into a taxi passing by luckily and the driver says have you been clipped or raped lady?—and: I will take you to the heat station. She says oh no please forget it... and goes back to Philadelphia to place a Wreath on Duke’s grave, and comes to Los Angeles with a Southern Accent....) “And I became what you see now: a wild restless woman with countless of exhusbands,” Miss Destiny said. “But do you know, baby, that I have never been Really Married? I mean in White, coming down a Winding Staircase.... And I will! I will fall in love again soon—I can feel it—and when I do, I will have my Fabulous Wedding, in a pearlwhite gown—” and she went on delightedly until she caught sight of Pauline’s reflection in the panel of mirrors behind the bar, and something about the way Pauline was looking in our direction clearly threatened she would come right over and introduce herself and bug Miss Destiny. “Goddam queer,” Miss Destiny murmured, and she was fiercely depressed. 3

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 33 3/23/2011 2:15:39 DANIEL (VO/ON) He came up with the idea that people would make panels memorializing their friends and children and lovers. It was a creative, positive way to focus their grief and sew it all together and make a powerful political statement. 2:15:59 GUY (VO/ON) When they went to Washington and unfolded those blankets, it was like, you know, to me, lotus flower after lotus flower after lotus flower, and each petal was a person, you know? And it was so powerful. It was so powerful you didn’t even have to say anything. The tears would just come. 2:16:30 ED (on archival video) How are you? 2:16:31 PATIENT (on archival video) I’m good. 2:16:32 ED (OS) (on archival video) Nice. 2:16:33 PATIENT (on archival video) (overlapping) Nervous but good. 2:16:34 ED (OS/ON) (on archival video) Sure. The results are negative. 2:16:36 PATIENT (on archival video) Okay. Good. (chuckles) 2:16:38 ED (on archival video) Very good. 2:16:39 PATIENT (on archival video) (overlapping) Good. 2:16:40 ED (VO/ON) I still wanted to be involved. After my work in the hospital, it was fairly easy for me to translate, take those skills and move into working in testing clinics and working with people who are at risk for HIV, as well as occasionally having to tell people that they were infected. 2:17:03 PAUL (VO/ON) When the test occurred, one of the main things we could

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Writing for the most part in Arabic, they introduced a metaphysical dimension into Judaism. From the beginning, they were concerned about the contrast between the remote God of the philosophers and the highly personalized God of the Bible. One of the first Jewish faylasufs, Saadia ibn Joseph (882–942), for example, found the idea of creation ex nihilo fraught with philosophical difficulties. In the main, however, Jewish philosophers tended to be less radical than the Muslims, did not concern themselves with science, confined their attention to religious matters, and concluded in the main that reason’s chief use was to help the philosopher give a more systematic explanation of religious truth. Maimonides (1134–1204), the greatest of the Jewish rationalists, believed that falsafah was unsuitable for the laity, but it could wean Jews from their more facile ideas of God. Maimonides developed an apophatic spirituality that denied any positive attributes to God, arguing that we could not even say that God was good or existed. A person who relied on this kind of affirmation would make God incredible, he warned in his Guide to the Perplexed, and “unconsciously loses his belief in God.” 26 But again, for most Jews the God of the philosophers was too abstract, unable to offer any consolation in times of persecution and suffering. Increasingly they turned to the mystical spirituality of the Kabbalah, which was developed in Spain during the late thirteenth century. Some of the pioneers of this spirituality—Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon, Isaac de Latif, and Joseph Gikatilla—had been involved in falsafah but found its attenuated God empty of religious content. 27 Yet they used philosophic motifs, such as divine emanation, to describe the process whereby the utterly unknowable Godhead, which they called En Sof (“Without End”), had emerged from its lonely inaccessibility and made itself known to humanity. Like Sufism, Kabbalah was an unashamedly mythical and imaginative spirituality. Until the modern period, it would inform the piety of many Jews and, as we shall see, would even become a mass movement. In the Muslim world, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were able to collaborate and learn from one another. But in Western Europe, during the last years of Anselm’s life, the first Crusades were launched against Islam. In 1096, some of the Crusaders attacked the Jewish communities along the Rhine valley, and when they finally conquered Jerusalem in July 1099, they massacred some thirty thousand Jews and Muslims; the blood was said to have come up to the knees of their horses.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 16 3/23/2011 died, but, you know, the people you didn’t know--the friend of the friend. You know, you’d go get a coffee, and the person who used to give you coffee has died. You- you would, you know, whatever it was you were-- Your banker, your mailman, your-- All that mass, mass death, to the point where you, to some degree, would stop asking if people weren’t around, where they were. Unless you wanted to get into a discussion of them being dead or them being sick. 1:36:11 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on obituary) AIDS Death Notices 1:36:12 PAUL (VO/ON) (CONT’D) So for a number of years, people are all assuming we’ve got this disease and it’s very likely we’ll be dead soon. 1:36:23 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on obituary) He Spawned a World of Music Jon Sims is Dead at Age 37 1:36:25 GUY (VO/ON) Everybody was reading the obituaries because they went from like this (gestures small) to like this (gestures large). You know, it was just like, oh my God, and everybody would get the BAR every week just to see who’s gone. Being the flower man, I was thrown into the middle of it because a lot of people would say, “Guy, uh, my friend died, and I don’t have enough money to buy flowers, and I need some help. Can you help us?” They wanted to bury their friends with a lot of dignity and beauty and-- And I came to you to help me out. You know, I’m emotional because it’s the first time I thought about it. I- I can’t even count the funerals that I did, you know, and if it wasn’t no more than-- You know, some people would bring me a vase, and they said, “Guy, this is all I can afford. Can you put some flowers in it or--.” You know, and I did that, and I, you know, it was never about money, it was about love. You know, it was about these people, not letting my friends down. You know, just helping them to other side. Mmm. 1:37:57 DR. MERVYN SILVERMAN Today I have ordered the closure of fourteen commercial establishments which promote and profit from the spread of AIDS. 1:37:58 TITLE (on archival film) Dr. Mervyn Silverman S.F. HEALTH DIRECTOR

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  A veces, me pregunto qué sucedió con la pistola Nerf de su hermano menor, la que todos usamos y a todos nos lastimaba el pulgar. ―Jesucristo ―murmura Pike―. ¿Cómo no sabía de esto? Recuerdo vagamente escuchar algo, pero no sabía que Cole era amigo de alguien en ese accidente. Me enderezo y asiento. ―Sí, Cole... ―hago una pausa, tratando de encontrar mis palabras―, fue difícil para él superarlo. Los ojos de Pike se estrechan en mí. ―Se suponía que él llevara a Nick esa noche ―explico. La comprensión cruza su rostro, y estoy segura que siente como si debería saber todo esto, pero tiene sentido que Cole no le dijera a mucha gente. Estaba avergonzado. ―No nos separamos después de eso ―le digo. Estaba herida, Cole estaba herido, y era la única que sabía por qué se sentía responsable, así que era la única con quien podía hablar. Y después de un tiempo, solo se volvió un hábito. Nosotros, juntos. Nosotros, ayudándonos. Nosotros, queriendo lo que era familiar, constante, y seguro. Nosotros, aferrándonos a Nick al aferrarnos el uno al otro. Ambos estábamos desesperados por un amigo verdadero. Él y yo lamentándonos por Nick, pero también yo alejándome de mi ex novio. Fue tan fácil sumergirse el uno en el otro y escapar. Tan fácil. ―Lo siento mucho, Jordan ―dice Pike―. ¿Estás bien? Lo miro fijamente. —Lo siento ―vacila, apartando la mirada―. Es estúpido preguntar esto ahora, supongo. No, no es estúpido en absoluto. Es agradable tener a alguien con quien hablar. ―Todo está bien. O lo estará ―digo―. Tiene que estarlo. Lanza su mirada hacia mí otra vez, y señalo hacia la piscina. ―Me senté en el fondo de una piscina oscura con los ojos cerrados hasta que no pude contener más mi respiración. Tiene que estar bien ahora, ¿cierto? ―pregunto. Resopla, curvando su boca en una sonrisa. Se levanta y estira su mano de nuevo, y esta vez la tomo. Me levanta, y nos dirigimos a la casa, pero noto que la vela todavía está encendida sobre la mesa de madera. Dirigiéndome ahí, me inclino sobre la mesa, cierro los ojos, y soplo, la vela se apaga. Retrocediendo, lo sigo por las escaleras. ―¿Puedo hacerte otra pregunta? ―dice. ―Claro. ―¿Por qué haces eso? ―Me mira. ―¿Qué? ―Lo de cerrar los ojos para soplar una vela ―explica―. Te he visto hacerlo unas cuantas veces. Me encojo de hombros, sin darme cuenta que lo había notado. Pensé que me había vuelto bastante buena haciéndolo rápidamente y sin que nadie me viera. ―Solo una peculiaridad. ―Lo sigo por la puerta mosquitera―. Los deseos de cumpleaños no siempre se hacen realidad, así que no pierdo la oportunidad cuando soplo una vela.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  All of which leads me back, of course, to Matthew. I think of his long, difficult search for meaning, for identity. For me. His search often looked so familiar, even though Matthew didn’t have my luck, or my focus. Nor my insecurity. Maybe if he’d had a little more insecurity… In his quest to find himself, he dropped out of college. He experimented, dabbled, rebelled, argued, ran away. Nothing worked. Then, at last, in 2000, he seemed to enjoy being a husband, a father, a philanthropist. He got involved in Mi Casa, Su Casa, a charity building an orphanage in El Salvador. On one of his visits there, after a few days of hard, satisfying work, he took a break. He drove with two friends to Ilopango, a deep-water lake, to go scuba diving. For some reason he decided to see how deep he could go. He decided to take a risk that even his risk-addicted father would never take. Something went wrong. At 150 feet my son lost consciousness. If I were to think about Matthew in his final moments, fighting for air, I believe my imagination could get me very close to how he must have felt. After the thousands of miles I’ve logged as a runner, I know that feeling of fighting for that next breath. But I won’t let my imagination go there, ever. Still, I’ve talked to the two friends who were with him. I’ve read everything I’ve been able to get my hands on about diving accidents. When things go wrong, I’ve learned, a diver often feels something called “the martini effect.” He thinks everything is okay. Better than okay. He feels euphoric. That must have happened to Matthew, I tell myself, because at the last second he pulled out his mouthpiece. I choose to believe this euphoria scenario, to believe that my son didn’t suffer at the end. That my son was happy. I choose, because it’s the only way I can go on. Penny and I were at the movies when we found out. We’d gone to the five o’clock showing of Shrek 2. In the middle of the movie we turned and saw Travis standing in the aisle. Travis. Travis? He was whispering to us in the dark. “You guys need to come with me.” We walked up the aisle, out of the theater, from darkness to light. As we emerged he said, “I just got a phone call from El Salvador…” Penny fell to the floor. Travis helped her up. He put his arm around his mother and I staggered away, to the end of the hallway, tears streaming. I recall seven strange unbidden words running through my head, over and over, like a fragment of some poem: So this is the way it ends.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “She’s not a bad person, Laura,” he said as my eyes almost fell out of my head in disbelief. “Michael, I’m going to caution you from defending her,” the therapist said. I realized it was the first time she was seeing the situation from my perspective instead of trying to make me acknowledge how my shortcomings had led to our demise. “I can’t do this anymore,” I announced abruptly. “I come in here hopeful every week, just to get flogged. I go home a little more broken every time. Then I work up the courage to come back only to have what little self-respect I still have beaten to a pulp. Michael, your loyalty is to this woman, not me, and I’m suffering. You have to acknowledge the extent of the damage you’ve done. If you can’t, then we’re done.” Both he and the therapist were silent. That week I found a new family therapist who I felt would advocate for both of us, not just him, and asked Michael to switch to her. She was soft-spoken and started our first session by leading a deep breathing exercise. It helped. When we spoke to each other, we did so with self-restraint. When we veered away from the subject we were discussing to assign blame or make snide remarks to each other, she would gently steer us back. She made a list of the upcoming events we couldn’t figure out how to navigate so that we could make plans for them: Daisy’s prom, her graduation, our summer in the country. She was like a magician, putting a spell on us so that we could speak respectfully and kindly. One day she asked me to look directly at Michael when I was talking to him as until then, I had addressed him while looking at her or out the window – I hadn’t looked him in the eye in months. I said I would try, took a deep breath and stared at him. He looked like a stranger to me, that deep connection we had for so many years simply nonexistent. The thousands of words we could once have communicated with just our eyes had gone silent. I had held out hope that when I finally looked into his eyes, we would magnetically connect to each other again; instead, the lack of recognition blindsided me all over again. “He’s taken everything from me,” I cried. “I don’t know him anymore, I don’t recognize myself, I’ve lost the peace of mind and ease with which I used to walk through the world. I used to think to myself at random moments of the day, I’m happy, I love my life. Now I’m terrified I’ll always be sad and angry and the enormity of my emotions is eating me alive. I want my old life back,” I said, and with that, covered my face with my hands and let my body heave.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Anyway, the writer asked the sailor: ‘Where would you like to go tomorrow?’ It was here in New York, on a weekend, and the charming golden angel answered: ‘I would like to see the sunrise on Wall Street.’ And that became the title of the writer’s next book: The Sunrise on Wall Street . Anyway, this sailor, this child, this golden angel, came to live with me—he had an argument with the writer. I thought he was on leave—but it turned out he was: Absent... Without... Leave. And they came for him—two other angels with arm bands: SPs—Storm Patrols—Shore Patrols—Something Patrol. It broke my heart And, later, Alfredo himself—who I do not wish to imply, by mentioning his association with me, is similarly inclined—.... Not that I am ashamed of my own inclinations—not at all—but just as I would resent being thought heterosexual, so I must assume he would resent the opposite.... And I have had friends of all sexes! My life has flung itself wide, Wide; like a windshield wiper I have covered my allotted area, fully.... But perhaps that is a bad allusion: the windshield wiper being so slender! ... Alfredo told me later: Tante Goulu, you let the emotions rule you.’ Yes, that is true. I can conceive of no more beautiful world than one ruled by the emotions—what a lovely world! One would not push through the subway, thinking one might crush someone lovely. Oh, it would be a lovely world—ruled by the positive emotions. But then, child, the world is All Wrong. You see, it is backwards. How much more logical, for example, had we been brought up on the idea that God is evil? Why, it would make the world completely good. But, alas, they insist God is good (and I am not talking about the God which is Love—I am talking about the Other One, the one they pray to!)—and all around us, cruelty, hunger, perversity—oh, perversity (like why was I run over by a weak old woman when—?... but Ive already told you that story, and the time of our interviews is too precious to retrace our footsteps). Yes, all around us, evil—about which, perhaps, you might be able to tell me something. Larry met you on Times Square; that is a world of its own.... Now, Larry—he is not an angel.” He made a face. “He serves another function: he brings me angels; he is loyal .” With a shrug. “But we were talking about evil, and I had mentioned Times Square. Lately, I have been intrigued by street angels. Larry brings them to me, I interview them. One, a lovely child, fell asleep during our interviews. He thought I wouldnt notice it behind the sunglasses he wore—the dear child! And I pretended not to. I kept on narrating my comments on life. It seemed fitting to lull him thus to sleep.... And so you must tell me all about Times Square, child, all, all.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Writing for the most part in Arabic, they introduced a metaphysical dimension into Judaism. From the beginning, they were concerned about the contrast between the remote God of the philosophers and the highly personalized God of the Bible. One of the first Jewish faylasufs , Saadia ibn Joseph (882–942), for example, found the idea of creation ex nihilo fraught with philosophical difficulties. In the main, however, Jewish philosophers tended to be less radical than the Muslims, did not concern themselves with science, confined their attention to religious matters, and concluded in the main that reason’s chief use was to help the philosopher give a more systematic explanation of religious truth. Maimonides (1134–1204), the greatest of the Jewish rationalists, believed that falsafah was unsuitable for the laity, but it could wean Jews from their more facile ideas of God. Maimonides developed an apophatic spirituality that denied any positive attributes to God, arguing that we could not even say that God was good or existed. A person who relied on this kind of affirmation would make God incredible, he warned in his Guide to the Perplexed , and “unconsciously loses his belief in God.” 26 But again, for most Jews the God of the philosophers was too abstract, unable to offer any consolation in times of persecution and suffering. Increasingly they turned to the mystical spirituality of the Kabbalah, which was developed in Spain during the late thirteenth century. Some of the pioneers of this spirituality—Abraham Abulafia, Moses de Leon, Isaac de Latif, and Joseph Gikatilla—had been involved in falsafah but found its attenuated God empty of religious content. 27 Yet they used philosophic motifs, such as divine emanation, to describe the process whereby the utterly unknowable Godhead, which they called En Sof (“Without End”), had emerged from its lonely inaccessibility and made itself known to humanity. Like Sufism, Kabbalah was an unashamedly mythical and imaginative spirituality. Until the modern period, it would inform the piety of many Jews and, as we shall see, would even become a mass movement. In the Muslim world, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were able to collaborate and learn from one another. But in Western Europe, during the last years of Anselm’s life, the first Crusades were launched against Islam. In 1096, some of the Crusaders attacked the Jewish communities along the Rhine valley, and when they finally conquered Jerusalem in July 1099, they massacred some thirty thousand Jews and Muslims; the blood was said to have come up to the knees of their horses.