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 Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Five days later, I stood beside his open coffin in the funeral home. I kissed Randy on the forehead. I put my hand on his chest. Randy had always been short, only five four as an adult, but he’d always been built like a wolverine. Thick and muscular. But in his coffin, Randy looked skinny. In my memory, Randy was a vibrant teenager, a fullback, point guard, and fastball pitcher. And now, in the present, he was a forty-nine-year-old man—killed in a car wreck—who’d dealt with the typical and atypical health problems of a middle-aged Native American. Age had turned him smaller and darker. He’d always been handsome—a blue-eyed Indian—and he was still handsome, dressed in a white shirt and Indian-design vest, as he rested in his coffin. I turned away from Randy so I could address the gathered mourners. So I could memorialize him. I saw dozens of Indians I had known for my whole life, and I saw their children, who I didn’t know at all. I’d been in kindergarten with some of those Indians. One of those Indians had been my favorite babysitter. I saw Randy’s brothers and sisters, and his mother and father, and his children. I saw my brothers and sisters sitting in the back row of seats. And then I spoke. I hadn’t written anything down. I hadn’t prepared. I spoke directly from the heart, partly as the reservation boy I used to be, the skinny and unknown Indian kid named Junior. And partly as the urban Indian named Sherman, who’d somehow become an unskinny and famous writer. I felt unreal. Like I had been transported into one of my own books. But the characters in books live forever. And real people die. I closed my eyes, inhaled, exhaled, opened my eyes, and spoke. And this, to the best of my compromised memory, is what I said: When I heard about Randy’s death, I instantly thought about the movie Stand by Me, based on the novella The Body, by Stephen King. I thought about the end of that movie, when we learn that Chris Chambers, played as a kid by River Phoenix, became a lawyer. And we also learn that he was stabbed to death while trying to break up a fight in a fast-food restaurant. A tragic, unpredictable death. I have seen that movie a hundred times, at least, but I still cry every time. And I really cry when Gordie Lachance, played by Richard Dreyfuss as an adult, types those amazing, amazing words: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone? So I thought about being twelve years old in Wellpinit, and I thought about Randy, who was my best friend back then. I thought about his tragic, unpredictable death. And I realized that I’ve never again had a friend like him. I have never really had a friend as important to me, as necessary, as Randy.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And for some reason, that thought made me laugh even harder. I was laughing so hard that I threw up a little bit in my mouth. I spit out a little piece of cantaloupe. Which was weird, because I don’t like cantaloupe. I’ve hated cantaloupe since I was a little kid. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten the evil fruit. And then I remembered that my sister had always loved cantaloupe. Ain’t that weird? It was so freaky that I laughed even harder than I’d already been laughing. I started pounding the dashboard and stomping on the floor. I was going absolutely insane with laughter. My dad didn’t say a word. He just stared straight ahead and drove home. I laughed the whole way. Well, I laughed until we were about halfway home, and then I fell asleep. Snap, just like that. Things had gotten so intense, so painful, that my body just checked out. Yep, my mind and soul and heart had a quick meeting and voted to shut down for a few repairs. And guess what? I dreamed about cantaloupe! Well, I dreamed about a school picnic I went to way back when I was seven years old. There were hot dogs and hamburgers and soda pop and potato chips and watermelon and cantaloupe. I ate, like, seven pieces of cantaloupe. My hands and face were way sticky and sweet. I’d eaten so much cantaloupe that I’d turned into a cantaloupe. Well, I finished my lunch and I ran around the playground, laughing and screaming, when I felt this tickle on my cheek. I reached up to scratch my face and squished the wasp that had been sucking sugar off my cheek. Have you ever been stung in the face? Well, I have, and that’s why I hate cantaloupe. So, I woke up from this dream, this nightmare, just as my dad drove the car up to our house. “We’re here,” he said. “My sister is dead,” I said. “Yes.” “I was hoping I dreamed that,” I said. “Me, too.” “I dreamed about that time I got stung by the wasp,” I said. “I remember that,” Dad said. “We had to take you to the hospital.” “I thought I was going to die.” “We were scared, too.” My dad started to cry. Not big tears. Just little ones. He breathed deep and tried to stop them. I guess he wanted to be strong in front of his son. But it didn’t work. He kept crying. I didn’t cry. I reached out, wiped the tears off my father’s face, and tasted them. Salty. “I love you,” he said. Wow. He hardly ever said that to me. “I love you, too,” I said. I never said that to him. We walked into the house. My mom was curled into a ball on the couch. There were, like, twenty-five or thirty cousins there, eating all of our food. Somebody dies and people eat your food. Funny how that works.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I closed my eyes, inhaled, exhaled, opened my eyes, and spoke. And this, to the best of my compromised memory, is what I said: When I heard about Randy’s death, I instantly thought about the movie Stand by Me, based on the novella The Body, by Stephen King. I thought about the end of that movie, when we learn that Chris Chambers, played as a kid by River Phoenix, became a lawyer. And we also learn that he was stabbed to death while trying to break up a fight in a fast-food restaurant. A tragic, unpredictable death. I have seen that movie a hundred times, at least, but I still cry every time. And I really cry when Gordie Lachance, played by Richard Dreyfuss as an adult, types those amazing, amazing words: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone? So I thought about being twelve years old in Wellpinit, and I thought about Randy, who was my best friend back then. I thought about his tragic, unpredictable death. And I realized that I’ve never again had a friend like him. I have never really had a friend as important to me, as necessary, as Randy. You all remember me when I was twelve. And when I was younger. Skinny and sickly and smart and smart-ass and wearing those government glasses that weighed about thirty pounds. A lot of kids bullied me. Some of you in this room, some of you bullied me. You know who you are. I certainly remember you. Ha! Yeah, it’s good to laugh. It’s good to tease. We’re Indians. So we know that teasing can be an act of love. But you old bullies shouldn’t worry too much about how mean you used to be. I forgive you. A little bit. But I really wonder how many of you remember hurting me? And maybe I hurt some of you, too, and I don’t remember it. If I ever hurt you, then I am sorry. We were all young and foolish. We were reservation Indian kids, and that was difficult for all of us. I like to joke and tell people that I’m not one of those Indians who believe in magic, but I believe in interpreting coincidence exactly the way I want to. I don’t know if it was a coincidence that Randy came to Well-pinit in sixth grade. He lived only fifteen miles away from my house. But he went to school in Springdale. And I had never met him. The world was a different place back then. It was bigger and smaller at the same time. You could belong to the same tribe, and live on the same reservation only fifteen miles apart, and be the same age, but you could still be strangers to each other.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  On five or six occasions she received what was the standard treatment of the day, electroshock therapy. In September 1962, when Mark was five, his mother’s body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Her car was parked on the Golden Gate Bridge. Mark turned into a restless young man. He went to college to study creative writing but dropped out in order to experience the real world. In 1976 he was living in a camp of migrant workers, hoping to become the next Jack London, when he learned that his brother Bruce had become catatonic and had been committed to a state hospital in Oregon. Mark hitchhiked to Portland to oversee Bruce’s care. He carried around a backpack full of books on Buddhism and the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Although it is easy to see in hindsight that the nineteen-year-old Mark Rathbun was primed, because of his troubled background and questing philosophy, to become a part of the Church of Scientology, it wasn’t clear to him at the time. His current spiritual mentor, Krishnamurti, preached against the idea of messiahs, but he also stated that every individual has the responsibility for discovering the causes of his own limitations in order to attain universal spiritual and psychological freedom. That resonated with Hubbard’s aim of “clearing the planet.” Psychotherapy had evolved somewhat from the indignities that had been inflicted on their mother; it had moved into pharmacology. But drugs didn’t seem to offer a solution to Bruce’s problems; in Mark’s opinion, his brother was just being warehoused, held in a chemical straitjacket. Rathbun got a job as a short-order cook at Dave’s Deli, and each day, when he went to the bus stop in downtown Portland on his way to the hospital, he would pass the Scientology mission on Salmon Street. He would banter with the Scientology recruiters and soon got to know them by name. One day, he told a recruiter, “I’ve got ten minutes. Why don’t you give me your best shot?” The Scientologist started pitching the Hubbard communications course, which at the time cost fifty dollars. It immediately appealed to Rathbun. “The problem is, I’ve only got twenty-five bucks to my entire name,” he said. The recruiter let him take the course, and threw in a copy of Dianetics as well. In that first course, Rathbun went exterior. It was completely real to him. All the Eastern philosophy he had absorbed had been leading to this moment. He finally realized that he was separate from his body. Hadn’t this been the point of the Buddha’s teachings—to isolate the spirit and end the repetitive cycle of life and death? From that moment on, Rathbun never looked back. He was transformed. Another recruiter persuaded Rathbun that he would be better able to deal with his brother’s problems if he had more training, which he could afford if he joined the Sea Org.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He later took his life by jumping off a bridge on Pacific Coast Highway near Big Sur.4 The biggest financial scandal involving church members was a Ponzi scheme operated by Reed Slatkin; he was one of the co-founders, with Paul Haggis’s friend Sky Dayton, of EarthLink. Slatkin’s massive fraud involved more than half a billion dollars in investments; much of the initial “profit” was returned to Scientology investors, such as Daniel and Myrna Jacobs, who earned nearly $3 million on a $760,500 “investment.” According to Marty Rathbun, Slatkin’s Scientology investors included Anne Archer and Fox News commentator Greta Van Susteren. Later investors were not so lucky. Slatkin was convicted of defrauding $240 million; it is still not known how much of that money went directly to the church, although the court found that about $50 million was funneled to the church indirectly by investors with massive gains. In 2006, groups affiliated with the Church of Scientology, including the Celebrity Centre, agreed to pay back $3.5 million. IN JULY 2004 Miscavige hosted Tom Cruise’s forty-second birthday party aboard the Scientology cruise ship Freewinds . The Golden Era Musicians, including Miscavige’s father on trumpet, played songs from Cruise’s movies as film clips flickered on the giant overhead screens installed especially for the occasion. Cruise himself danced and sang “Old Time Rock and Roll,” reprising a famous scene in Risky Business , the movie that firmly established him as a star. Occasionally, the Freewinds is used to confine those Sea Org members that the church considers most at risk for flight. Among the crew on the ship during Cruise’s birthday party was Valeska Paris, a twenty-six-year-old Swiss woman. Paris had grown up in Scientology and joined the Sea Org when she was fourteen. Three years later, her stepfather, a self-made millionaire, committed suicide, leaving a diary in which he blamed the church for fleecing his fortune. When Valeska’s mother denounced the church on French television, Valeska was isolated at the Clearwater base in order to keep her away from her mother. The next year, at the age of eighteen, she was sent to the Freewinds . She was told she would be on the ship for two weeks. She was held there against her will for twelve years. Shortly before Cruise arrived, Paris developed a cold sore, which caused Miscavige to consign her to a condition of Treason, so she wasn’t allowed to go to the birthday party, but she later did wind up serving Cruise and his girlfriend at the time, the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz. In October, Miscavige acknowledged Cruise’s place in Scientology by awarding him the Freedom Medal of Valor. Miscavige called Cruise “ the most dedicated Scientologist I know” before an audience of Sea Org members who had spent much of their lives working for the church for a little more than seven dollars a day. Then he hung the diamond-encrusted platinum medallion around the star’s neck.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And it’s not like my mother and father were born into wealth. It’s not like they gambled away their family fortunes. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people. Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands. Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams. Given the chance, my mother would have gone to college. She still reads books like crazy. She buys them by the pound. And she remembers everything she reads. She can recite whole pages by memory. She’s a human tape recorder. Really, my mom can read the newspaper in fifteen minutes and tell me baseball scores, the location of every war, the latest guy to win the Lottery, and the high temperature in Des Moines, Iowa. [image "An illustration showing two figures representing the artist’s parents. One figure is holding books and dressed in professional clothing. The other figure is playing a saxophone, wearing casual clothes and a hat." file=image_rsrc4RP.jpg] Given the chance, my father would have been a musician. When he gets drunk, he sings old country songs. And blues, too. And he sounds good. Like a pro. Like he should be on the radio. He plays the guitar and the piano a little bit. And he has this old saxophone from high school that he keeps all clean and shiny, like he’s going to join a band at any moment. But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are. It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it. Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. So, poor and small and weak, I picked up Oscar. He licked my face because he loved and trusted me. And I carried him out to the lawn, and I laid him down beneath our green apple tree. “I love you, Oscar,” I said. He looked at me and I swear to you that he understood what was happening. He knew what Dad was going to do. But Oscar wasn’t scared. He was relieved. But not me. I ran away from there as fast as I could.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Think about that one.” So I thought about that one: After I decided to go to Reardan, I felt like an invisible mountain gorilla scientist. My grandmother was the only one who thought it was a 100 percent good idea. “Think of all the new people you’re going to meet,” she said. “That’s the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people. I wish I could go with you. It’s such an exciting idea.” Of course, my grandmother had met thousands, tens of thousands, of other Indians at powwows all over the country. Every powwow Indian knew her. Yep, my grandmother was powwow-famous. Everybody loved her; she loved everybody. In fact, last week, she was walking back home from a mini powwow at the Spokane Tribal Community Center, when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Yeah, you read that right. She didn’t die right away. The reservation paramedics kept her alive long enough to get to the hospital in Spokane, but she died during emergency surgery. Massive internal injuries. At the hospital, my mother wept and wailed. She’d lost her mother. When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents. My father was all quiet and serious with the surgeon, a big and handsome white guy. “Did she say anything before she died?” he asked. “Yes,” the surgeon said. “She said, ‘Forgive him.’ ” “Forgive him?” my father asked. “I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her.” Wow. My grandmother’s last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love, and tolerance. She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her. I think my dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death. I think my mother would have helped him. I think I would have helped him, too. But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer. Even dead, she was a better person than us. The tribal cops found Gerald hiding out at Benjamin Lake. They took him to jail. And after we got back from the hospital, my father went over to see Gerald to kill him or forgive him. I think the tribal cops might have looked the other way if my father had decided to strangle Gerald. But my father, respecting my grandmother’s last wishes, left Gerald alone to the justice system, which ended up sending him to prison for eighteen months. After he got out, Gerald moved to a reservation in California and nobody ever saw him again. But my family had to bury my grandmother. I mean, it’s natural to bury your grandmother.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  A dead still calm succeeded this storm, which ended in a profuse shower of tears. Had any one, but a few instants before, told me that I should have ever known any man but Charles, I would have spit in his face or had I been offered infinitely a greater sum of money than that I saw paid for me, I had spurned the proposal in cold blood. But our virtues and our vices depend too much on our circumstances; unexpectedly beset as I was, betrayed by a mind weakened by a long severe affliction, and stunned with the terrors of a goal, my defeat will appear the more excusable, since I certainly was not present at, or a party in any sense to it. However, as the first enjoyment is decisive, and he was now over the bar, I thought I had no longer a right to refuse the caresses of one that had got that advantage over me, no matter how obtained; conforming myself then to this maxim, I considered myself as so much in his power, that I endured his kisses and embraces without affecting struggles or anger; not that he, as yet, gave me any pleasure, or prevailed over the aversion of my soul, to give myself up to any sensation of that sort; what I suffered, I suffered out of a kind of gratitude, and as a matter of course what had passed. He was, however, so regardful as not to attempt the renewal of those extremities which had thrown me, just before, into such violent agitations; but, now secure of possession, contented himself with bringing me to temper by degrees, and waiting at the hand of time for those fruits of generosity and courtship, which he since often reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any. This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of interest, I had fallen to him, I had reason to be pleased that he found, in my person, wherewithal to keep him from leaving me as easily as he had had me. The evening was, in the mean time, so far advanced, that the maid came in to lay the cloth for supper, when I understood, with joy, that my landlady, whose sight was present poison to me, was not to be with us. Presently a neat and elegant supper was introduced, and a bottle of Burgundy, with the other necessaries, were set on a dumb-waiter.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  However, frightful traces of her husband's libertinage were scattered thickly about; but, I repeat, nothing spoiled, nothing damaged... the very image of a beautiful lily upon which the honeybee has inflicted some scratches. To so many gifts Madame de Gernande added a gentle nature, a romantic and tender mind, a heart of such sensibility!... welleducated, with talents... a native art for seduction which no one but her infamous husband could resist, a charming timbre in her voice and much piety: such was the unhappy wife of the Comte de Gernande, such was the heavenly creature against whom he had plotted; it seemed that the more she inspired ideas, the more she inflamed his ferocity, and that the abundant gifts she had received from Nature only became further motives for that villain's cruelties. "When were you last bled, Madame?" I asked in order to have her understand I was acquainted with everything. "Three days ago," she said, "and it is to be tomorrow...." Then, with a sigh: "... yes, tomorrow... Mademoiselle, tomorrow you will witness the pretty scene." "And Madame is not growing weak?" "Oh, Great Heaven! I am not twenty and am sure I shall be no weaker at seventy. But it will come to an end, I flatter myself in the belief, for it is perfectly impossible for me to live much longer this way: I will go to my Father, in the arms of the Supreme Being I will seek a place of rest men have so cruelly denied me on earth." These words clove my heart; wishing to maintain my role, I disguised my trouble, but upon the instant I made an inward promise to lay down my life a thousand times, if necessary, rather than leave this ill-starred victim in the clutches of this monstrous debauchee. The Countess was on the point of taking her dinner. The two old women came to tell me to conduct her into her cabinet; I transmitted the message; she was accustomed to it all, she went out at once, and the two women, aided by the two valets who had carried me off, served a sumptuous meal upon a table at which my place was set opposite my mistress. The valets retired and the women informed me that they would not stir from the antechamber so as to be near at hand to receive whatever might be Madame's orders. I relayed this to the Countess, she took her place and, with an air of friendliness and affability which entirely won my heart, invited me to join her. There were at least twenty dishes upon the table. "With what regards this aspect of things, Mademoiselle, you see that they treat me well." "Yes, Madame," I replied, "and I know it is the wish of Monsieur le Comte that you lack nothing." "Oh yes!

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  We survived because we trusted one another.” “So?” “So, back in the day, weird people threatened the strength of the tribe. If you weren’t good for making food, shelter, or babies, then you were tossed out on your own.” “But we’re not primitive like that anymore.” “Oh, yes, we are. Weird people still get banished.” “You mean weird people like me,” I said. “And me,” Gordy said. “All right, then,” I said. “So we have a tribe of two.” I had the sudden urge to hug Gordy, and he had the sudden urge to prevent me from hugging him. “Don’t get sentimental,” he said. Yep, even the weird boys are afraid of their emotions. My Sister Sends Me a Letter Dear Junior, I am still looking for a job. They keep telling me I don’t have enough experience. But how can I get enough experience if they don’t give me a chance to get experience? Oh, well. I have a lot of free time, so I have started to write my life story. Really! Isn’t that crazy? I think I’m going to call it HOW TO RUN AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE AND FIND YOUR HOME. What do you think? Tell everybody I love them and miss them! Love, your Big Sis! P.S. And we moved into a new house. It’s the most gorgeous place in the world! And a Partridge in a Pear Tree When the holidays rolled around, we didn’t have any money for presents, so Dad did what he always does when we don’t have enough money. He took what little money we did have and ran away to get drunk. He left on Christmas Eve and came back on January 2. With an epic hangover, he just lay on his bed for hours. “Hey, Dad,” I said. “Hey, kid,” he said. “I’m sorry about Christmas.” “It’s okay,” I said. But it wasn’t okay. It was about as far from okay as you can get. If okay was the earth, then I was standing on Jupiter. I don’t know why I said it was okay. For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart yet again. Jeez, I’d just won the Silver Medal in the Children of Alcoholics Olympics. “I got you something,” he said. “What?” “It’s in my boot.” I picked up one of his cowboy boots. “No, the other one,” he said. “Inside, under that foot-pad thing.” I picked up the other boot and dug inside. Man, that thing smelled like booze and fear and failure. I found a wrinkled and damp five dollar bill. “Merry Christmas,” he said. Wow. Drunk for a week, my father must have really wanted to spend those last five dollars. Shoot, you can buy a bottle of the worst whiskey for five dollars.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “So, anyway,” he said. “I was reading this book about old-time Indians, about how we used to be nomadic.” “Yeah,” I said. “So I looked up nomadic in the dictionary, and it means people who move around, who keep moving, in search of food and water and grazing land.” “That sounds about right.” “Well, the thing is, I don’t think Indians are nomadic anymore. Most Indians, anyway.” “No, we’re not,” I said. “I’m not nomadic,” Rowdy said. “Hardly anybody on this rez is nomadic. Except for you. You’re the nomadic one.” “Whatever.” “No, I’m serious. I always knew you were going to leave. I always knew you were going to leave us behind and travel the world. I had this dream about you a few months ago. You were standing on the Great Wall of China. You looked happy. And I was happy for you.” Rowdy didn’t cry. But I did. “You’re an old-time nomad,” Rowdy said. “You’re going to keep moving all over the world in search of food and water and grazing land. That’s pretty cool.” I could barely talk. “Thank you,” I said. “Yeah,” Rowdy said. “Just make sure you send me postcards, you asshole.” “From everywhere,” I said. I would always love Rowdy. And I would always miss him, too. Just as I would always love and miss my grandmother, my big sister, and Eugene. Just as I would always love and miss my reservation and my tribe. I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them. “Ah, man,” Rowdy said. “Stop crying.” “Will we still know each other when we’re old men?” I asked. “Who knows anything?” Rowdy asked. Then he threw me the ball. “Now quit your blubbering,” he said. “And play ball.” I wiped my tears away, dribbled once, twice, and pulled up for a jumper. Rowdy and I played one-on-one for hours. We played until dark. We played until the streetlights lit up the court. We played until the bats swooped down at our heads. We played until the moon was huge and golden and perfect in the dark sky. We didn’t keep score. Discover Your Next Great Read Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors. Tap here to learn more. [image "Two circles containing the white letters L and B, representing Little Brown and Company." file=image_rsrc4RH.jpg] [image "Book cover of ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, 10th Anniversary Edition’ by Sherman Alexie." file=image_rsrc4TF.jpg] Contents [image file=image_rsrc4TG.jpg] A NOTE FROM SHERMAN ALEXIE PERSONAL PHOTOS FROM SHERMAN ROWDY, ROWDY, ROWDY A LETTER FROM AN EDUCATOR FAN ARTWORK WATER ON THE BRAIN JESS WALTER INTERVIEWS SHERMAN ALEXIE INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN FORNEY DISCUSSION GUIDE

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  The sky was blue. Visibility was good. Rowdy was alone in his car, so nobody knows for sure why he drifted across the center line and struck a car in the opposite lane. One of his brothers suspects that Randy might have been distracted by his phone. He liked to text and drive. The other drivers were hospitalized for their injuries but survived. There were also three children in the other cars, but they were not injured. Randy sustained massive head and internal injuries and died that night without ever regaining consciousness. He had not been wearing his seat belt. In 2016, what kind of foolish, impulsive, and risk-embracing idiot refuses to wear his seat belt? Come on, Randy! What were you thinking? I did not receive the news about Randy’s death until the next morning. I had been writing and, as usual, ignoring my cell phone. But then my sister called my home landline at the same moment Randy’s sister-in-law sent an urgent e-mail. I immediately called Randy’s sister-in-law, and she told me the terrible news. I had not spoken to Randy in many years. I had not seen him in an even longer period. But I was instantly transported back in time, and I wept and wailed like a twelve-year-old boy whose best friend had just died. I was Sherman Alexie Jr., mourning the sudden death of Randy Peone. And I was Arnold Spirit Jr., mourning the sudden death of Rowdy. My real and fictional lives blended in torturous ways. “Oh my God,” I said to his sister-in-law. “I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.” Five days later, I stood beside his open coffin in the funeral home. I kissed Randy on the forehead. I put my hand on his chest. Randy had always been short, only five four as an adult, but he’d always been built like a wolverine. Thick and muscular. But in his coffin, Randy looked skinny. In my memory, Randy was a vibrant teenager, a fullback, point guard, and fastball pitcher. And now, in the present, he was a forty-nine-year-old man—killed in a car wreck—who’d dealt with the typical and atypical health problems of a middle-aged Native American. Age had turned him smaller and darker. He’d always been handsome—a blue-eyed Indian—and he was still handsome, dressed in a white shirt and Indian-design vest, as he rested in his coffin. I turned away from Randy so I could address the gathered mourners. So I could memorialize him. I saw dozens of Indians I had known for my whole life, and I saw their children, who I didn’t know at all. I’d been in kindergarten with some of those Indians. One of those Indians had been my favorite babysitter. I saw Randy’s brothers and sisters, and his mother and father, and his children. I saw my brothers and sisters sitting in the back row of seats. And then I spoke. I hadn’t written anything down. I hadn’t prepared.

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

  Just when the expulsion of Harald Klak compelled Ansgar to give up the Danish mission, at least for the time being, an embassy was sent by the Swedish king, Björn, to the emperor, Lewis the Pious, asking him to send Christian missionaries to Sweden. Like the Danes, the Swedes had become acquainted with Christianity through their wars and commercial connections with foreign countries, and with many this acquaintance appears to have awakened an actual desire to become Christians. Accordingly Ansgar went to Sweden in 829, accompanied by Witmar. While crossing the Baltic, the vessel was overtaken and plundered by pirates, and he arrived empty handed, not to say destitute, at Björkö or Birka, the residence of King Björn, situated on an island in the Maelarn. Although poverty, and misery were very poor introduction to a heathen king in ancient Scandinavia, he was well received by the king; and in Hergeir, one of the most prominent men at the court of Birka, he found a warm and reliable friend. Hergeir built the first Christian chapel in Sweden, and during his whole life he proved an unfailing and powerful support of the Christian cause. After two years’ successful labor, Ansgar returned to Germany; but he did not forget the work begun. As soon as he was well established as bishop in Hamburg, he sent, in 834, Gautbert, a nephew of Ebo, to Sweden, accompanied by Nithard and a number of other Christian priests, and well provided with everything necessary for the work. Gautbert labored with great success. In Birka he built a church, and thus it became possible for the Christians, scattered all over Sweden, to celebrate service and partake of the Lord’s Supper in their own country without going to Duerstede or some other foreign place. But here, as in Denmark, the success of the Christian mission aroused the jealousy and hatred of the heathen, and, at last, even Hergeir was not able to keep them within bounds. An infuriated swarm broke into the house of Gautbert. The house was plundered; Nithard was murdered; the church was burnt, and Gautbert himself was sent in chains beyond the frontier. He never returned to Sweden, but died as bishop of Osnabrück, shortly before Ansgar. When Ansgar first heard of the outbreak in Sweden, he was himself flying before the fury of the Danish heathen, and for several years he was unable to do anything for the Swedish mission. Ardgar, a former hermit, now a priest, went to Sweden, and in Birka he found that Hergeir had succeeded in keeping together and defending the Christian congregation; but Hergeir died shortly after, and with him fell the last defence against the attacks of the heathen and barbarians.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  And this argument is pure sophistry: in return for the small amount of good I receive at the hands of others thanks to the virtue they practice, my obligation to practice virtue in my turn causes me to make a million sacrifices for which I am in no wise compensated. Receiving less than I give, I hence conclude a very disadvantageous bargain, I experience much more ill from the privations I endure in order to be virtuous, than I experience good from those who do it to me; the arrangement being not at all equitable, I therefore must not submit to it, and certain, by being virtuous, not to cause others as much pleasure as I receive pain by compelling myself to be good, would it not be better to give up procuring them a happiness which must cost me so much distress? There now remains the harm I may do others by being vicious and the evil I myself would suffer were everyone to resemble me. Were we to acknowledge an efficient circulation of vices, I am certainly running a grave danger, I concede it; but the grief experienced by what I risk is offset by the pleasure I receive from causing others to be menaced: and there! you see, equality is re-established: and everyone is more or less equally happy: which is not the case and cannot be the case in a society where some are good and others are bad, because, from this mixture, perpetual pitfalls result! and no pitfalls exist in the other instance.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  He studied science in college and has worked for our tribal fish hatchery for as long as I can remember. However, our dear Randy has always had a mean temper, like Rowdy. He has always liked to fight, physically and verbally. He has struggled with depression and anger issues. Sometimes he drinks too much. Sometimes he is cruel to his family and friends. So, yeah, Rowdy and Randy also have a lot in common. Don’t worry. Randy read this book before it was published, and he signed a release letter that stated he was cool with his fictional avatar. “Junior,” he said to me during a phone call, “the book is good. But I didn’t punch you in the face when you left Wellpinit.” “Yes, you did,” I said. “Nope,” he said. We argued about that point for a while. We, as they say, agreed to disagree. And then, a few months later, on a publicity visit in Miami, I dreamed of the day when Randy had punched me and sent me to my new school, to Reardan, with a fresh black eye. Except in my dream, a different kid slugged me. I woke from that dream and realized Randy wasn’t the one who’d punched me. It was a different Indian boy, one of my damned bullies. I thought about calling up Randy to apologize. But then I remembered that he had definitely punched me in the nose after a Little League baseball game. Well, I had punched him first, but that was only because he’d been picking on me, just like one of my eternal bullies. Randy was supposed to be my best friend. He was supposed to be my protector. So I punched him in the face for betraying me. And then he punched me back. But he punched me harder . I think he broke my nose. I never went to the doctor. I let it heal on its own. And my nose has been a little flatter ever since. So, okay, Randy did not punch me when I left him for Reardan. But he had slugged me one year earlier. I think the fictional and real punches had very similar emotional content . And I think Randy would probably agree with me. Or maybe he would argue with me. Maybe he’d be right to argue. After all, as I think about our Little League two-punch fight, I think I might have overreacted to Randy’s teasing. But, hey, I had been chronically bullied. I did have the grade school PTSD of a battered kid. So maybe I had been reflexively conditioned to meet any aggression, however mild, moderate, or wild, with my own aggression. I don’t know for sure. I will never know for sure. Because on December 8, 2016, Randy J. Peone died in a car wreck on a narrow two-lane highway north of Spokane, Washington. He was not intoxicated. The roads were clean and clear.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Ah, you have accomplished what you desired! I hate you!’ “Then she grew delirious. She was frightened, and cried: “‘Fire, I do not fear . . . but strike them all . . . He has gone. . . . He has gone.’ . . . “The delirium continued. She no longer recognized the children, not even little Lise, who had approached. Toward noon she died. As for me, I was arrested before her death, at eight o’clock in the morning. They took me to the police station, and then to prison, and there, during eleven months, awaiting the verdict, I reflected upon myself, and upon my past, and I understood it. Yes, I began to understand from the third day. The third day they took me to the house.” . . . Posdnicheff seemed to wish to add something, but, no longer having the strength to repress his sobs, he stopped. After a few minutes, having recovered his calmness, he resumed: “I began to understand only when I saw her in the coffin.” . . . He uttered a sob, and then immediately continued, with haste: “Then only, when I saw her dead face, did I understand all that I had done. I understood that it was I, I, who had killed her. I understood that I was the cause of the fact that she, who had been a moving, living, palpitating being, had now become motionless and cold, and that there was no way of repairing this thing. He who has not lived through that cannot understand it.” We remained silent a long time. Posdnicheff sobbed and trembled before me. His face had become delicate and long, and his mouth had grown larger. “Yes,” said he suddenly, “if I had known what I now know, I should never have married her, never, not for anything.”

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

  To sum up the Augustinian doctrine of sin: This fearful power is universal; it rules the species, as well as individuals; it has its seat in the moral character of the will, reaches thence to the particular actions, and from them reacts again upon the will; and it subjects every man, without exception, to the punitive justice of God. Yet the corruption is not so great as to alter the substance of man, and make him incapable of redemption. The denial of man’s capacity for redemption is the Manichaean error, and the opposite extreme to the Pelagian denial of the need of redemption. "That is still good," says Augustine, "which bewails lost good; for had not something good remained in our nature, there would be no grief over lost good for punishment."1834 Even in the hearts of the heathen the law of God is not wholly obliterated,1835 and even in the life of the most abandoned men there are some good works. But these avail nothing to salvation. They are not truly good, because they proceed from the turbid source of selfishness. Faith is the root, and love the motive, of all truly good actions, and this love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin." Before the time of Christ, therefore, all virtues were either, like the virtues of the Old Testament saints, who hoped in the same Christ in whom we believe, consciously or unconsciously Christian; or else they prove, on closer inspection, to be comparative vices or seeming virtues, destitute of the pure motive and the right aim. Lust of renown and lust of dominion were the fundamental traits of the old Romans, which first gave birth to those virtues of self-devotion to freedom and country, so glorious in the eyes of men; but which afterwards, when with the destruction of Carthage all manner of moral corruption poured in, begot the Roman vices.1836

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  What would Junior think of a cultural outsider, such as Ian Frazier, who visits a reservation to gather material for a book and then calls his book On the Rez? 8. At Junior’s grandmother’s funeral, held on the football field to accommodate all the people who loved her, Junior’s mother publicly gives a white billionaire his comeuppance to the delight of the whole community. “And then my mother started laughing,” Junior says. “And that set us all off. It was the most glorious noise I’d ever heard. And I realized that, sure, Indians were drunk and sad and displaced and crazy and mean but, dang, we knew how to laugh. When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing. And so, laughing and crying, we said goodbye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said goodbye to all of them. Each funeral was a funeral for all of us. We lived and died together.” How does this story reflect a cultural insider’s perspective and how does it disrupt stereotypes about stoic Indians? 9. “I’m fourteen years old and I’ve been to forty-two funerals,” Junior says. “That’s really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.” In the community of Wellpinit, everyone is related, everyone is valued, everyone lives a hardscrabble life, everyone is at risk for early death, and the loss of one person is a loss to the community. Compare Wellpinit to Reardan, whose residents have greater access to social services, health care, and wealth, and people are socially distanced from each other. How does Junior use this blunt, matter-of-fact statement to describe this vast gulf between an impoverished Indian community and a middle-class white town just a few miles away? 10. In many ways, Junior is engulfed by the emotional realities of his life and his community. Yet his spare, matter-of-fact language and his keen sense of irony help him to confront and negotiate the hurt, the rage, and the senselessness of Wellpinit’s everyday realities. How does Junior use language to lead readers, whose lives may be very different from his own, to the kind of understanding that they will not necessarily get from other young adult fiction, whose writers do not have this same kind of lived experience? 11.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Lightning glitters, shakes, hail slashes down, winds blow wrathfully, heaven's fire convulses the clouds, in the most hideous manner makes them to seethe; it seems as if Nature were wearied out of patience with what she has wrought, as if she were ready to confound all the elements that she might wrench new forms from them. Terrified, Madame de Lorsange begs her sister to make all haste and close the shutters; anxious to calm her, Therese dashes to the windows which are already being broken; she would do battle with the wind, she gives a minute's fight, is driven back and at that instant a blazing thunderbolt reaches her where she stands in the middle of the room... transfixes her. Madame de Lorsange emits a terrible cry and falls in a faint; Monsieur de Corville calls for help, attentions are given each woman, Madame de Lorsange is revived, but the unhappy Therese has been struck in such wise hope itself can no longer subsist for her; the lightning entered her right breast, found the heart, and after having consumed her chest and face, burst out through her belly. The miserable thing was hideous to look upon; Monsieur de Corville orders that she be borne away.... "No," says Madame de Lorsange, getting to her feet with the utmost calm; "no, leave her here before my eyes, Monsieur, I have got to contemplate her in order to be confirmed in the resolves I have just taken. Listen to me, Corville, and above all do not oppose the decision I am adopting; for the present, nothing in the world could swerve my designs. "The unheard of sufferings this luckless creature has experienced although she has always respected her duties, have something about them which is too extraordinary for me not to open my eyes upon my own self; think not I am blinded by that false-gleaming felicity which, in the course of Therese's adventures, we have seen enjoyed by the villains who battened upon her. These caprices of Heaven's hand are enigmas it is not for us to sound, but which ought never seduce us.

• From Between Us

  BETWEEN US . . . . . . . . . . . . HOW CULTURES CREATE EMOTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . BATJA MESQUITA CONTENTS PREFACE Chapter 1 LOST IN TRANSLATION Chapter 2 EMOTIONS: MINE OR OURS? Chapter 3 TO RAISE YOUR CHILD Chapter 4 “RIGHT” AND “WRONG” EMOTIONS Chapter 5 BEING CONNECTED AND FEELING GOOD Chapter 6 WHAT’S IN A WORD? Chapter 7 LEARNING THE WALTZ Chapter 8 EMOTIONS IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD AFTERWORD Acknowledgments Notes Index PREFACE I BECAME A PSYCHOLOGIST BECAUSE I WAS INTRIGUED BY what people felt. I wanted to understand their inner lives, what made them tick. Though it is hard to reconstruct my interest in emotions, it may have had something to do with my background. I am from a Dutch Jewish family and my parents survived the Holocaust in hiding. I was a “psychologically minded” child, always trying to figure out how my parents felt. Many of my parents’ emotions were not rooted in the circumstances that I saw right in front of my eyes, but rather in events long (or perhaps not so long) past. Desperation was around the corner, and lurking under the surface was the hurt of rejection and discrimination. A small defiance on my side could meet with my parents’ hurt feelings or desolation; my adolescent rebellion against the culture and religion was taken by my dad as disrespect, or worse, lack of love. My coming to the topic of emotions was my sense that people keep deep inside themselves these emotions that can erupt. It was easy for me to see emotions as a property of the individual, because many of the ones I observed were stronger than warranted by the current situations or relationships. It was my childhood aspiration to become a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist who could help individuals whose emotions made them suffer. And I imagined that I could change these emotions by changing the person from the inside. My view of emotions as part of our deep inner lives was helped by a broader cultural focus on feelings. In Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) cultures, the 1960s and ’70s were the time of emancipation of feelings. Authenticity and freedom of choice reigned supreme, and so it was important to know what you really felt and really wanted. What moved you inside should determine how you lived. Soul- and emotion- searching were utterly important, because they would help you to make better choices. The focus was inward. My generation in WEIRD cultures questioned institutional rules, and put personal feelings and preferences center stage. I have done my share of soul-searching, and in my younger years I focused inward to find my emotions.