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 Shunned (2018)

  The first, three-day round of chemotherapy was administered in the hospital, and Bob’s body accepted the medicine, experiencing just a whisper of nausea, like a passing spell of car-sickness. He came home and took to his bed, declining visitors. Something fierce awakened in me, and I found an inner calm beyond my previous experience. Adrenaline and unconditional love mixed into a potent cocktail of physical strength and mental acuity that allowed me to function on very little sleep. A well-honed meditation practice, prayer, and a daily dose of Ativan carried me, and I sensed we were both being held by divine forces and sources. A core team of close friends gathered around us and helped me with practical matters and navigating the tsunami of details and decisions demanding attention. One of those friends created a registry on CaringBridge.org, where we posted news of Bob’s progress to keep friends and family informed. Every evening I sat at his bedside and read aloud the e-mails and cards that came in from hundreds of people around the world. Bob and I both felt everyone’s love at the intuitive level of essence, and that sustained us through some difficult moments. We had a string of days when rest and optimism prevailed, followed by a series of strenuous complications, two emergency trips to the hospital, time spent in intensive care. His decline was wicked fast. Gaunt from extreme weight loss, Bob’s body was no longer a match for the illness or its treatment. Flabbergasted and bereft, I brought him home to the merciful quiet of hospice care. Four days later, he was gone. We were together eight short years, but our relationship had a timeless quality. Losing Bob knocked me out of time. He was only ever good to me, and we were good together. Despite the awfulness that comes with terminal illness, we shared staggering moments of truth and beauty that mystify me still. Holding the space for his peaceful transition was one of the supreme honors of my life. The night before he passed away, I had the sudden presence of mind to ask our friend Raz to contact my parents and tell them what was going on. I lacked the emotional bandwidth to call them myself. I required nothing from them. My soul family was providing all the sustenance I could absorb. Raz called them from a back room of my house and invited them to attend Bob’s memorial. They were deeply saddened by the news and asked Raz to give me a hug and assure me of their love. “I talked to both of your parents individually,” Raz said, standing in front of me, holding my hands. “They spoke from their heart, Linda, not their religion.” After embracing me, he pulled away and added, “I think they’ll come.” Raz was right. The day before the service, he met my parents at the airport and drove them to their hotel.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Near the end of the third week Fossie began making arrangements to send her home. At first, Rat said, Mary Anne seemed to accept it, but then after a day or two she fell into a restless gloom, sitting off by herself at the compound's perimeter. Shoulders hunched, her blue eyes opaque, she seemed to disappear inside herself. A couple of times Fossie approached her and tried to talk it out, but Mary Anne just stared out at the dark green mountains to the west. The wilderness seemed to draw her in. A haunted look, Rat said—partly terror, partly rapture. It was as if she had come up on the edge of something, as if she were caught in that no-man's-land between Cleveland Heights and deep jungle. Seventeen years old. Just a child, blond and innocent, but then weren't they all? The next morning she was gone. The six Greenies were gone, too. In a way, Rat said, poor Fossie expected it, or something like it, but that did not help much with the pain. The kid couldn't function. The grief took him by the throat and squeezed and would not let go. "Lost," he kept whispering. It was nearly three weeks before she returned. But in a sense she never returned. Not entirely, not all of her. By chance, Rat said, he was awake to see it. A damp misty night, he couldn't sleep, so he'd gone outside for a quick smoke. He was just standing there, he said, watching the moon, and then off to the west a column of silhouettes appeared as if by magic at the margin of the jungle. At first he didn't recognize her—a small, soft shadow among six other shadows. There was no sound. No real substance either. The seven silhouettes seemed to float across the surface of the earth, like spirits, vaporous and unreal. As he watched, Rat said, it made him think of some freaky opium dream. The silhouettes moved without moving. Silently, one by one, they came up the hill, passed through the wire, and drifted in a loose file across the compound. It was then, Rat said, that he picked out Mary Anne's face. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark—not blue, though, but a bright glowing jungle green. She did not pause at Fossie's bunker. She cradled her weapon and moved swiftly to the Special Forces hootch and followed the others inside. Briefly, a light came on, and someone laughed, then the place went dark again.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  συμπενθέω, trans. fo join in mourning for a thing, τι Isocr. 176 Ὁ, Lycurg. 153. 23. II. intr. to mourn together, τινι with one, Aesch. Cho. 199; absol., Eur. H. F. 1390, Dem. 1399. 29. συμπένομαν, Dep. to be poor along with another in a thing, τινί Tivos Plat. Meno 71 B. σύμπεντε, five together, by fives, Hyperid. ap. Harp. 172. 12. συμπεπαίνομαι, Pass. to come to a head, Hipp. £165 B, Oribas. συμπεπλεγμένως, Adv. part. pf. pass. complicatedly, Galen. 19. 489, Athanas. συμπεπνιγμένως, Adv. pf. part. pass. like one strangled, Psell. συμπεπτικός, 7, dv, promoting digestion, digestive, Galen. 14.694, 764. συμπεραίνω, to join or assist in accomplishing, τι Eur. Med. 886, Isocr. 76 C:—Med., συμπεραίνεσθαί τινι ἔχθραν to join fully in enmity with another, Dem. 281. 27; σ. ἀπέραντα Luc. Philops. 9 :—Pass. ¢o be ac- complished simultaneously, τὰ ξυμπερανθέντα τάχη (ἢ). II. to decide or conclude absolutely, σ. φροντίδα to make up one’s mind, Eur. Med. 341; σ. καὶ κλώθειν ἑκάστῳ τὰ οἰκεῖα Arist. Mund. 7, 4; κλῇθρα μοχλοῖς σ. ἰο make the doors doubly sure by bars, Eur. Or, 1551 :—Pass. to be quite finished, Plat. Tim. 39 D, Xen. Cyr. 6. 1, 30. 2. in Logic, Med. συμπεραίνεσθαι to conclude syllogistically, draw conclusions, Arist. An. Pr. 2. 5, 1, Eth. N. 1. 3, 4:—-Pass. to be so concluded, to be conclu- sive, Id. Phys. 1. 3, 43 τὸ συμπερανθέν the conclusion drawn, Τά. Eth. N. 7. 2, 8; ἔστιν συμπεπερασμένον Id. An. Pr. 1. 25, 33 0. τι κατά τινος ΤΡ:.2: 10; 2. III. intr. in Act. to extend equally far, Id. EDA. 5. 5, 7. συμπεραιόω, to conclude along with or together, τὴν διάνοιαν Dem. Phal. § 2, cf. Stob. t. 108. 74 :—Pass. to be concluded together, Philo 2. 374, etc. ; εἴς τι Clem. Al. 452; ἔν τινι Phot. συμπεραίωσις, ἡ, α common ending, Tod βίου Clem. Al. 623. συμπέρανσις, ἡ, a concluding, Eus. Ὁ. E. 419 C. συμπεραντέον, verb. Adj. one must conclude, Galen. 5. 66. συμπεραντικός, 7, ὄν, tending to a conclusion, Phot. Bibl. 154. 15. Ady. --κῶς, conclusively, λέγειν Arist. Soph. Elench. 15, 11. συμπέρασμα, τό, a finishing, end, Ocell. Luc. 1. 3, Eust., etc. II. in Logic, the conclusion in a syllogism, Arist. An. Pr. 1. 8, 3., 1.25, 2 54.» op: 8. 1, 2; al. 2. the subject of the conclusion, Id. An. Bry 104. συμπερασματικός, 7, όν, of or for the conclusion, conclusive, Schol. Eur. Hec. 511. Αάν. -- κῶς, Arist. Rhet. 2. 24, 2. συμπερασμός, ὃ, --᾽συμπέρασμα, Artemid. 3. 58. συμπεραστικός, 4, όν, -- συμπεραντικός (4. v.), Greg. Nyss. συμπερατόω, --συμπεραίνω, Byz. συμπεράω, to bring together, unite, Plotin. de Pulchr. p. 134 Creuz. συμπέρθω, to destroy with or together, Eur. Hel. τού, in tmesi, . συμπεριάγω, to carry about along with or together, Xen. Occ. 8, 12:— Pass. to be so carried, to go round with ox together, Id. Cyt. 4. 3, 1, Arist. Φ x 1463

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  στενἄχίζω or στοναχίζω, (the latter form seems to have most authority for Hom., La Roche Text-Kr. p. 354) :—Ep. lengthd. form of στενάχω (4. ν.), only used in pres. and impf., to groan, sigh, wail, Il. 19. 304, Od. 9. 13., 11. 214, Hes. Th. 858; μεγάλα στ. Il. 23. 172; ἀδινὰ, ἀδινὸν στ. Il. 23. 225, Od. 24. 316 :—so in Med., Il. 2. 784.» 7. 95- II. trans. to bewail, lament, c. acc., Od. 1. 243: v. Buttm. Lexil.s. v. στενάχω [ἃ], poét. lengthd, form of στένω, only used in pres. and impf. (v. sub fin.), and mostly in part. pres., zo groan, sigh, wail, freq. in Hom., who joins ἀδινὰ στενάχων Il. 24. 123, etc.; βαρέα στ. 8. 334, etc.; βαρὺ or. Od. 8. 95, 534; μεγάλα Od. 4. 516, etc.; πυκνὰ μάλα στ. 1]. 18. 318., 21. 417:—he also uses the Med. in act. sense, στενάχοντο 10. 301., 23. 1, etc.; sometimes also in Trag., as Aesch. Pr. 99, Soph. El. 141, 1076; metaph.-of the roar of torrents, Il. 16. 391; the loud breathing of horses galloping, Ib. 393; θὴρ .. στενάχων βρέμει Ap. Rh. 1. 1247 ; στοᾶς στεναχούσης groaning from being overcrowded (cf. γέμω, gemo), Ar. Ach. 548 ;—in Soph. El. 1076, πατρός seems to be cor- Tupt. 11. trans. to bewail, lament, τὴν αἰεὶ στενάχεσκε 1]. 19. 132; τὸ παρὸν... πῆμα στενάχω Aesch. Pr. 99; so in Med., τοὺς δὲ στενάχοντο Od. 9. 467. The aor. to στενάχω and στεναχίζω is ἐστο- νάχησα; and these are the three forms which seem guaranteed by the best authorities, στενάχω alone of the three being used in Trag.—Cf. στεναχίζω. 142 στενό-βουλος, ov, of narrow counsel, inops consiliz, Or. Sib. 5. 241. στενό-βρογχος, ov, narrow-throated, of vessels, Arr. Epict. 3. 9, 22. στενο-επιμήκηϑ, es, of a narrow oblong shape, Eust. 849. 8. στενο-θώραξ, ἄκος, 6, ἡ, with narrow breast or chest, Galen. στενο-κοίλιος, ov, narrow-bellied, Acl. ap. Ptol. Harmon. στενο-κορίασιϑ, ἡ, (μεόρη IIL) unnatural contraction of the pupil, Veget. στενο-κύμων, ονος, ὃ, H, surging in a strait, Archestr. ap. Ath. 313, A. στενο-κὠκῦτος, ov, of hair, so fast set in, that one screams when it is pulled out, Comic word in Ar. Lys. 448. στενολεσχέω, to talk subtly, quibble, Ar. Nub. 320. στενο-λέσχηϑ, ov, 6, one that talks subtly, a quibbler, Suid. στενολεσχία, ἡ, quibbling, Cyrill. στενο-λογέω, Hesych.; and -Adyos, Eust. 25. 33, = -λεσχέω, -λέσχης. στενό-μακρος, ον, narrow and long, Schol. Soph. Tr. 98 :—also - μή- kys, ἐς, Schol. Eur. Hec. 29. στενο-μονία, 7, (μονήν) a narrow dwelling, Byz. στενο-πἄθέω, to be distressed, Cass. Probl. 70 (Ideler oreyvor-). στενό-πορθμος, ov, at or on a strait, Χαλκίς Bur. 1. A. 167 :—pecul. fem. στενοπορθμίς, (50s, Archestr. ap. Ath. 92 Ὁ. στενο-πορία, 7, a narrow way or pass, Xen. Hell. 3. 5, 20 (v. 1. - χωρία, cf. 1. 3, 7), Dio C. 48. 41; cf. δυσπορία.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "All right," I said, "what's the moral?" "Forget it." "No, go ahead." For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a Stare that lasted all day. "Hear that quiet, man?" he said. "That quiet—just listen. There's your moral." In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh." True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can't believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe. This one does it for me. I've told it before—many times, many versions —but here's what actually happened. We crossed that river and marched west into the mountains. On the third day, Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead. The trees were thick; it took nearly an hour to cut an LZ for the dustoff. Later, higher in the mountains, we came across a baby VC water buffalo. What it was doing there I don't know—no farms or paddies—but we chased it down and got a rope around it and led it along to a deserted village where we set up for the night. After supper Rat Kiley went over and stroked its nose. He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn't interested. Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn't to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn't a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week he would write a long personal letter to the guy's

• From Shunned (2018)

  Raz told them I lived in a very special setting and that it would be a shame for them not to visit my home while there. Raz was not aware of Mom’s refusal to visit my home years earlier, when I lived in Chicago. Over two hundred people gathered at the clubhouse of the rustic yet elegant private golf club on Mount Tam, five miles as the crow flies from our house. Bob had many fond memories golfing there as a guest of his close friend Bill, who was a member. Bill arranged for us to have the entire clubhouse for our purposes, including the patios, bar, and great room, which had rugged high beams and a river-stone fireplace on the inside wall. The opposite wall was lined with cathedral-height windows, and beyond that emerald fairways curled off into the woods. A podium and microphone were set in front of the fireplace, and chairs were lined up in long rows. Outside, the sun was shy with its heat but not its illumination. The air was crisp, and geraniums and petunias tumbled from planters on the patio. Wild turkey and deer crossed the well-groomed span of Bon Tempe Meadow. The mood of the crowd was tempered by sorrow and the joy of reunion. People who had not seen each other in years were together again; there was the low hum of delight, hugs, “you haven’t changed a bit,” and expressed longing for happier circumstances. As I took my place at the podium, the din of voices fell into silence. I scanned the audience and saw my parents among the forsaken, seated in the second aisle at the start of the row. Dad’s sport coat was unbuttoned, and his hands rested on each thigh. He was biting his lip. Light reflected off his spectacles, but his concerned gaze and prominent jawline were clear. Mom leaned into him, both hands resting on the handbag on her lap. Thin as always, she barely occupied any space; the bigger personalities surrounding her diminished her presence. Knowing little about my life, they could not have been prepared for the size, sophistication, and unconditional warmth of my community. Their presence was an unexpected consolation to me. The great room was filled to capacity, and people were standing three deep in back. Bob was a true friend to princes and paupers alike, and the crowd reflected his generous, egalitarian nature. Each person was an echo of his diverse and interesting life as a friend, father, husband, uncle, brother, leader in the human- potential and environmental movements, international management executive, real estate developer, attorney, nonprofit board member, global citizen, and lover of life.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone. Oh shit, Rat Kiley said, the guy's dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound—the guy's dead. I mean really. The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble. Dave Jensen carried a rabbit's foot. Norman Bowker, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders. The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to the touch, and weighed 3 ounces at most. It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. They'd found him at the bottom of an irrigation ditch, badly burned, flies in his mouth and eyes. The boy wore black shorts and sandals. At the time of his death he had been carrying a pouch of rice, a rifle, and three magazines of ammunition. You want my opinion, Mitchell Sanders said, there's a definite moral here. He put his hand on the dead boy's wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and used Kiowa's hunting hatchet to remove the thumb. Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was. Moral? You know. Moral. Sanders wrapped the thumb in toilet paper and handed it across to Norman Bowker. There was no blood. Smiling, he kicked the boy's head, watched the flies scatter, and said, It's like with that old TV show—Paladin. Have gun, will travel. Henry Dobbins thought about it. Yeah, well, he finally said. I don't see no moral. There it is, man. Fuck off. They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic water containers, each with a 2-gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Even now, when I think back on it, I can still see the glossy whiteness of her scalp. She wasn't bald. Not quite. Not completely. There were some tufts of hair, little patches of grayish brown fuzz. But what I saw then, and keep seeing now, is all that whiteness. A smooth, pale, translucent white. I could see the bones and veins; I could see the exact structure of her skull. There was a large Band-Aid at the back of her head, a row of black stitches, a piece of gauze taped above her left ear. Nick Veenhof took a step backward. He was still smiling, but the smile was doing strange things. The whole time Linda stared straight ahead, her eyes locked on the blackboard, her hands loosely folded at her lap. She didn't say anything. After a time, though, she turned and looked at me across the room. It lasted only a moment, but I had the feeling that a whole conversation was happening between us. Well? she was saying, and I was saying, Sure, okay. Later on, she cried for a while. The teacher helped her put the cap back on, then we finished the spelling test and did some fingerpainting, and after school that day Nick Veenhof and I walked her home. It's now 1990. I'm forty-three years old, which would've seemed impossible to a fourth grader, and yet when I look at photographs of myself as I was in 1956, I realize that in the important ways I haven't changed at all. I was Timmy then; now I'm Tim. But the essence remains the same. I'm not fooled by the baggy pants or the crew cut or the happy smile—I know my own eyes—and there is no doubt that the Timmy smiling at the camera is the Tim I am now. Inside the body, or beyond the body, there is something absolute and unchanging. The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body—her life. She died, of course. Nine years old and she died. It was a brain tumor. She lived through the summer and into the first part of September, and then she was dead. But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up. She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say, "Timmy, stop crying."

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  But you can't say that. All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth. No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Lemon, no Rat Kiley. No trail junction. No baby buffalo. No vines or moss or white blossoms. Beginning to end, you tell her, it's all made up. Every goddamn detail—the mountains and the river and especially that poor dumb baby buffalo. None of it happened. None of it. And even if it did happen, it didn't happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Batangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy, and one night a guy named Stink Harris woke up screaming with a leech on his tongue. You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. The Dentist When Curt Lemon was killed, I found it hard to mourn. I knew him only slightly, and what I did know was not impressive. He had a tendency to play the tough soldier role, always posturing, always puffing himself up, and on occasion he took it way too far. It's true that he pulled off some dangerous stunts, even a few that seemed plain crazy, like the time he painted up his body and put on a ghost mask and went out trick-or-treating on Halloween. But afterward he couldn't stop bragging. He kept replaying his own exploits, tacking on little flourishes that never happened. He had an opinion of himself, I think, that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe it was a low opinion that he kept trying to erase. In any case, it's easy to get sentimental about the dead, and to guard against that I want to tell a quick Curt Lemon story.

• From The Historical Jesus (2000)

  the uprights themselves, through the wrists and possibly the ankles. 2. A small ledge may have been attached to the upright on which the condemned could sit to rest. D. We know a bit more about crucifixion now than we used to, largely because of an archaeological discovery made some thirty years ago. 1. The discovery was the partial remains of a crucified man, named Yehochanan, his ankle bone still attached to a piece of olive wood through which a stake had been driven. The nail had been driven into a knot in the wood and couldn’t be removed. 2. Yehochanan appears to have been tied to the cross by the arms; more commonly, a person was nailed through the wrists. E. Death by crucifixion was slow and painful. 1. It came not by loss of blood, but by suffocation, as the lung cavity distended and the person could no longer breathe. 2. Death came only when the victim lacked the strength to pull up on his arms to relieve the pressure on his chest; sometimes it took days. 3. In Jesus’ case, death came quickly, within several hours— possibly because he had been so badly abused already. 4. Jesus’ disciples were not there with him, though some of the women who had accompanied him from Galilee reportedly looked on from a distance (Mark 15:40). None was close enough, though, to hear what, if anything, he said at the end. 5. By mid-afternoon, on the day before Sabbath, he was dead. III. In several independent accounts, we are told that Jesus’ body was buried by an influential but secret follower, Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:42; John 19:38; G. Pet. 23). A. Some scholars have called this tradition into question on the grounds of contextual credibility. 1. Crucified criminals were usually not allowed decent burials, but were left on their crosses to rot and be devoured by scavengers or tossed into a common grave as part of their humiliation. ©2000 The Teaching Company. 143

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  (Here, I mistrust my memory, which holds no long talk between us of the type I’d have insisted on if our roles were reversed.) He and Dev come every afternoon to eat dinner with me in a private room. I cry before they arrive, then weep when they stride out. I cry for Mother to come. She’s about to head off on a spiritual retreat in Mexico counseling other alcoholics. Ponder the likelihood of that one—Mother as sober guru. Landing here is final proof I can’t outrun her, but neither can I get her to spring into action for me. Our phone call is brief . I’m in the hospital, I say. I wanted to kill myself. That’s terrible, honey. Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself? No, I was gonna use carbon monoxide, but I never did anything. Why’d you pick that? She sounds curious, like somebody idly shopping for suicide attempts as she might a ball gown. You don’t make a mess. You leave a very livid corpse. That’s just awful. Does Warren have Dev? Yeah. I get to see him every afternoon. Warren seems like he wants to really work on things, but we’ve been living like strangers for so long. Y’all should work things out. I know, Mother, I know. Since I was sixteen, you’ve wanted to pawn me off in matrimony to somebody. I just want you to be taken care of…. This marriage hasn’t exactly brought comfort and succor, otherwise I might not have planned to cash in my chips. He’s just so sweet with Dev. I don’t suppose you want to come up and help out a few weeks. (Actually, Warren had said it’d be awkward, the two of them in the house alone. Despite that and despite a marrow-deep certainty that she’d never come, I want her to want to.) She says, I just can’t, honey. You know I’ve had this trip to Mexico planned for a while. After she hangs up, I cry because part of me still wants to drag her behind my car. But the other part still wants to crawl into her lap. On the phone, Lecia tells me to snap out of it. That’s a Republican thing to say, I say, sniveling. She’s a fixer, and her inability to fix my mood makes her crazy. Or afraid, or both. I’m serious, she says. Tell me what you’re so miserable about. Do you want me to come up there and kick somebody’s ass? What? I feel like I’ve turned into Mother, I tell her . This draws an actual guffaw from her. You are crazy, she says. You’re nothing at all like Mother. I’m here in the Mental Marriott, like her. Well, you pay your taxes, for one, she says. You never shot at anybody… Wanted to, I say. Who doesn’t, she says. Then she adds, Also, unlike Mother, you have a job. Several jobs, if you count writing a book and raising a kid. Your second book!

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  He is clinging hard, and the bewilderment in his face tells me that all the explaining I’ve done about the move has rolled through his head like tumbleweed. I say, You’re going for a simple hip surgery, then in a few days, Lecia will ride with you to a facility where nurses can take better care of you than Mother. Yamma? Mama’s heart medication has been doubled, Daddy. A dozen times I’ve been over this, but for the first time, his expression goes quizzical, his head cants. Yamma? he says. Mama’s not here, I say. Yamma, he says, and a silly grin splays across his face, and he lets go the bed bar like a man relinquishing his hold on a life rope. Then he grabs my hand through the bars. Garfield, he says. He says this word a lot. Mother and Harold take it as a reference to the orange rascal of a cartoon cat from the funnies. Daddy has an orange cat coffee mug he can’t drink out of, and a plastic figurine that nonstop bares his teeth in a snide grin. Garfield, Daddy says. Maybe this is the day I figure out that Daddy never gave a shit about an orange effing feline in the funnies, which he used to flip past on his way to the scores. Garfield’s the name of our own street. What dimwits we are. How often did he tell me I couldn’t leave home by saying, You’re staying right here at 4901 Garfield. Garfield, he says. Which means Home. Safe. Stay. How little we ever wanted, the creatures in my family, and how hard we struggled in one another’s company not to get it. Looooo, he says, which means both hello and I love you . I love you back, I say. I love you more cause you’re bigger. But in my mind are other sentences, which I’ve spoken to enough licensed professionals by now that I can let them stream through me without a scalding lava burn. I love you harder cause I need you more, you leathery old galoot. Did my absence hurt you into this? How dare you cease to daddy me so soon…. And when the ambulance driver shows up with his stretcher, he and the attendant have to pry Daddy’s large-knuckled hands off the silver bars of that bed. Daddy’s eyes lock on mine. He says one word to me, and it must meander through his skull a long time, searching through the ruined brain to find the perfect monosyllabic curse. Bad, he says to me. They’ve taken his teeth out, and tears river down the crow’s feet of his tough Indian face. Bad bad bad. I talk to the ambulance driver. I look through Daddy’s wallet for his social security card, which I can’t find. What I do find is my first college report card—straight A’s for the only time since grade school.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  In the months after Ted Lavender died, there were many other bodies. I never shook hands—not that—but one afternoon I climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon. I watched my friend Kiowa sink into the muck along the Song Tra Bong. And in early July, after a battle in the mountains, I was assigned to a six-man detail to police up the enemy KIAs. There were twenty-seven bodies altogether, and parts of several others. The dead were everywhere. Some lay in piles. Some lay alone. One, I remember, seemed to kneel. Another was bent from the waist over a small boulder, the top of his head on the ground, his arms rigid, the eyes squinting in concentration as if he were about to perform a handstand or somersault. It was my worst day at the war. For three hours we carried the bodies down the mountain to a clearing alongside a narrow dirt road. We had lunch there, then a truck pulled up, and we worked in two-man teams to load the truck. I remember swinging the bodies up. Mitchell Sanders took a man's feet, I took the arms, and we counted to three, working up momentum, and then we tossed the body high and watched it bounce and come to rest among the other bodies. The dead had been dead for more than a day. They were all badly bloated. Their clothing was stretched tight like sausage skins, and when we picked them up, some made sharp burping sounds as the gases were released. They were heavy. Their feet were bluish green and cold. The smell was terrible. At one point Mitchell Sanders looked at me and said, "Hey, man, I just realized something." "What?" He wiped his eyes and spoke very quietly, as if awed by his own wisdom. "Death sucks," he said. Lying in bed at night, I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep. I invented my own dreams. It sounds impossible, I know, but I did it. I'd picture somebody's birthday party—a crowded room, I'd think, and a big chocolate cake with pink candles—and then soon I'd be dreaming it, and after a while Linda would show up, as I knew she would, and in the dream we'd look at each other and not talk much, because we were shy, but then later I'd walk her home and we'd sit on her front steps and stare at the dark and just be together. She'd say amazing things sometimes. "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you can't ever be dead." Or she'd say: "Do I look dead?" It was a kind of self-hypnosis. Partly willpower, partly faith, which is how stories arrive.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Near the end of the third week Fossie began making arrangements to send her home. At first, Rat said, Mary Anne seemed to accept it, but then after a day or two she fell into a restless gloom, sitting off by herself at the compound's perimeter. Shoulders hunched, her blue eyes opaque, she seemed to disappear inside herself. A couple of times Fossie approached her and tried to talk it out, but Mary Anne just stared out at the dark green mountains to the west. The wilderness seemed to draw her in. A haunted look, Rat said—partly terror, partly rapture. It was as if she had come up on the edge of something, as if she were caught in that no-man's-land between Cleveland Heights and deep jungle. Seventeen years old. Just a child, blond and innocent, but then weren't they all? The next morning she was gone. The six Greenies were gone, too. In a way, Rat said, poor Fossie expected it, or something like it, but that did not help much with the pain. The kid couldn't function. The grief took him by the throat and squeezed and would not let go. "Lost," he kept whispering. It was nearly three weeks before she returned. But in a sense she never returned. Not entirely, not all of her. By chance, Rat said, he was awake to see it. A damp misty night, he couldn't sleep, so he'd gone outside for a quick smoke. He was just standing there, he said, watching the moon, and then off to the west a column of silhouettes appeared as if by magic at the margin of the jungle. At first he didn't recognize her—a small, soft shadow among six other shadows. There was no sound. No real substance either. The seven silhouettes seemed to float across the surface of the earth, like spirits, vaporous and unreal. As he watched, Rat said, it made him think of some freaky opium dream. The silhouettes moved without moving. Silently, one by one, they came up the hill, passed through the wire, and drifted in a loose file across the compound. It was then, Rat said, that he picked out Mary Anne's face. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark—not blue, though, but a bright glowing jungle green. She did not pause at Fossie's bunker. She cradled her weapon and moved swiftly to the Special Forces hootch and followed the others inside. Briefly, a light came on, and someone laughed, then the place went dark again.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  While manhandling my mammoth suitcase through two security doors, you managed to hold each one open for me with your foot. The next instant I registered—peeking from the top of your saggy jeans—the orange boxers spattered with cartoon fish from Dr. Seuss’s One Fish, Two Fish that I read you as a kid. Inside, loading books into your messenger bag, you mentioned watching for the first time a video of Mother and me, filmed years ago by your camera (borrowed) in the crackerbox house of my kidhood. Mother was recounting her psychotic episode—the seminal event that burned off whatever innocence a kid in backwater Texas has coming. You know the story in broad outline and have steered clear of my writing about it—a healthy fence blocking my public life from your private one. But the old video stirred something in you. It was kind of crazy, you said. You were wrapping up wires for one of your cameras. I thought you meant Mother’s story of taking a carving knife to kill my sister and me when we were little. How she hallucinated she’d butchered us and called the doctor, who called the law, who took her away for a spell. Not that, you said. Your blue eyes fixed me where I stood. This curiosity about my family past has a new gravity to it, countered by your T-shirt, which reads, Don’t Give Me Drugs. You told me all that, you said. The way Grandma told it was strange, like it happened to somebody else. Crazy. She said, You were just so precious, I thought I’d kill you before they all got to hurt you. Then your girlfriend called from the next room, and the instant was over. I’d all but forgotten the tape. So after you’d gone, I played it—maybe for the first time all the way through. It’s a summer afternoon in a yellow kitchen we’ve yet to remodel. A few tiles still bear bullet holes from Mother’s pistol-wagging arguments with my daddy and two subsequent romances. The florid robe she’s wearing would suit a Wiccan priestess. Ditto her short, ashwhite hair, and her pale as marble skin, which still looks dewy. She reads some gnostic texts about goddesses and gods and the Christ within each of us. She pauses every now and then to say, Isn’t that wild? or to relight her long cigarillo. Next to her is a giant plastic sunflower my nephew gave her for Mother’s Day. She flips a switch on it, and it blinks to life, singing, You are my sunshine, my only sunshine—a song my daddy used to sing to me on the way to fishing. Don’t you love that? she says. It’s silly, but I love it. I ask what she was thinking on the night in question, and she says, I just couldn’t imagine bringing two girls up in a world where they do such awful things to women. So I decided to kill you both, to spare you.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Even now, when I think back on it, I can still see the glossy whiteness of her scalp. She wasn't bald. Not quite. Not completely. There were some tufts of hair, little patches of grayish brown fuzz. But what I saw then, and keep seeing now, is all that whiteness. A smooth, pale, translucent white. I could see the bones and veins; I could see the exact structure of her skull. There was a large Band-Aid at the back of her head, a row of black stitches, a piece of gauze taped above her left ear. Nick Veenhof took a step backward. He was still smiling, but the smile was doing strange things. The whole time Linda stared straight ahead, her eyes locked on the blackboard, her hands loosely folded at her lap. She didn't say anything. After a time, though, she turned and looked at me across the room. It lasted only a moment, but I had the feeling that a whole conversation was happening between us. Well? she was saying, and I was saying, Sure, okay. Later on, she cried for a while. The teacher helped her put the cap back on, then we finished the spelling test and did some fingerpainting, and after school that day Nick Veenhof and I walked her home. It's now 1990. I'm forty-three years old, which would've seemed impossible to a fourth grader, and yet when I look at photographs of myself as I was in 1956, I realize that in the important ways I haven't changed at all. I was Timmy then; now I'm Tim. But the essence remains the same. I'm not fooled by the baggy pants or the crew cut or the happy smile—I know my own eyes—and there is no doubt that the Timmy smiling at the camera is the Tim I am now. Inside the body, or beyond the body, there is something absolute and unchanging. The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body—her life. She died, of course. Nine years old and she died. It was a brain tumor. She lived through the summer and into the first part of September, and then she was dead. But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up. She can reach out, touch my wrist, and say, "Timmy, stop crying."

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  3 Lackluster College Coed …I had a friend who thought the secret was turning a turntable backwards. One pill made you stronger, one pill and you could fly. I had a friend who crashed us through a cornfield and all the husks could do was sing, but that was all right, it was singing that mattered to us, had weight, occupied space, in motion tended to stay in motion, in rest rest. You start with a darkness to move through but sometimes the darkness moves through you. —Dean Young, “Bright Window” W hen Mother and I had taken off for college, Daddy had stood on the back porch under the clothesline with the white cat slung over his shoulder like a baby he was burping, and he swore he’d come visit his first vacation. He said, Come Halloween, Pokey, at the latest. Old Pete’ll come walking up the road, making the rocks fly high. So stop that snubbing, you and your momma both. Make me wanna hork . He spoke these words out of his own wet face, wiped with the back of his rawboned hand, but it was all bullshit, his promise. I knew, and he knew I knew. Between us stood the tacit contract that come vacation time, old Red would need Daddy’s help nailing asbestos siding up at his camp, or our backyard fence would require mending, or so-and-so would be laid up and Daddy could use the overtime. He’d never set foot on this campus. His drinking schedule had become too inviolable. Plus, these college folks with whom I was hobnobbing wouldn’t know how to speak to a man who’d graduated grade six and spent days off cleaning his squirrel gun. In our household, I’d been assigned Daddy’s sidekick. Starting as a toddler, I’d kept a place standing beside him in his truck, and for the rest of his days, his lanky arm still reflexively extended itself at stop signs, as if to stop a smaller me from pitching through the windshield. But all through my drug-misty high school years, Daddy had floated through the house with an increasingly vacant stare, leaving a wake of Camel smoke. Over time, I followed the books Mother set down like so many bread crumbs to her side, and soon she was leaning in my doorway to hear Otis Redding or the sardonic Frank Zappa squawk. Once, she’d coiled my hair into a pinned twist that matched her own and we’d sat in an opera house half floodlit as a mournful soprano pined: Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore —I lived for life, I lived for love. That was Mother’s altar. Forget our scattered Sunday sorties into yoga and Christian Science. The theology Mother pored over—Buddhism mostly—was more theory than pursuit, and Lord knows why they baptized my sister, Lecia, Methodist. But I saw the shine in Mother’s eyes as that opera washed over her. Which music Daddy cared diddly for.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Without Warren’s hands cupping my own face, I’m almost faceless. I need his body in bed and his books on my shelves anchoring me to the planet. I need him ahead of me to complete a two-mile run, else I give up and light a smoke. I need his editing skills. When he draws his pen through clunky lines, I cut them. I need his unbudgeable integrity. I mean, when a big-deal magazine requested changing some of his poems, he pulled them rather than compromise. I’d have typed mine backward in Urdu to see them into print. Underneath the worries with Warren and money and how to live runs a humming current of hurt—Daddy lying wordless, eyes cloudy. They said he wouldn’t live off the respirator, but it’s over a year now. He’s being calcified, his empty shape pressed into the sheets like a fern in lava. Ask him if he wants more juice, and he might shout out, Bacon! Part of me believes I should catch the next bus down there to start spoon-feeding him—that’s my fantasy—a daughterly sacrifice I lack the maturity to pull off, for my patience with bedpans and bent straws rarely lasts an hour. Carrying the warm jar of piss his catheter linked him to, even the short distance to the caged hospital bed set up in my girlhood room, felt like bearing death itself. Lying alongside Warren that night, I again resolve to generate income, really get serious about it, to chip in on Daddy’s nursing and still meet school loans, without ever pestering Warren again, lest that gap between our backgrounds yawn open. Money can finalize my change, I tell myself. Also, I have to never, never, never drink hard stuff. Long as I stick to beer or wine, I’ll be fine. In the morning, when Warren stirs, I’ve already gone to the bank. The mug of coffee I bring him has a twenty-dollar bill rubber-banded to the handle. If we talked about the night before, I don’t recall it, which isn’t fair to either of us, for it doesn’t show our reasoned selves paring away at our scared ones. But it’s a neurological fact that the scared self holds on while the reasoned one lets go. The adrenaline that let our ancestors escape the sabertooth tiger sears into the meat of our brains the extraordinary, the loud. The shrieking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water. Not long after, though, some of his doubts about me leak out again, and again the topic’s a disparity in how we want to live. We’ve jogged five miles around Fresh Pond and are stretching out when he says, You know what my sister noticed about you first? I cling to the fence and am bending my knee to loosen the quad, wheezing out, My rapier wit?

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  χήρην λείπεις ἐν μεγάροισι 24. 7203 οὖρον., κατέλειπον ἐπὶ κτεάτεσσιν Οὐἀ.15.88; οἷόν μιν Τροίηνδε κιὼν κατέλειπεν ᾿Οδυσσεύς 17.314; so later, τὴν στρατιὴν καταλείπεσκε (Lon. impf.) ἐν τῷ προαστείῳ Hdt. 4. 78; φύ- λακον κ. τινά Id. 1. 113, cf. 2. 103; κ΄. τινὰ μόνον Soph. Ph. 809, εἴς. ; so in Med., καταλείπεσθαι παῖδας to leave behind one, Hdt. 3. 34, Plat. Symp. 209 D, etc. :—Pass. to be left or remain behind, Hat. 1. 209, Xen. An. 5. 6,12; c. gen., καταλελειμμένος τοῦ ἄλλου στρατοῦ being part of the army /eft behind (to guard Ionia), Hdt. 9. 96, cf. 7. 170. 2. to leave as an heritage, [τόξον] παιδὶ κάλλιπ᾽ ἀποθνήσκων Od, 21. 333 so, ἐμοὶ δ᾽ ὀδύνας τε γόους τε κάλλιπεν 1. 242, Cf. 11, 279; δόκησιν ἰσχύος καὶ ξυνέσεως Thuc. 4.18; αἰδῶ κ. παισὶν οὐ χρυσόν Plat. Legg. 729 B; ὀνείδη παισί Antipho 117. 20; c. inf., καταλείψει οὐδὲ ταφῆναι not enough to be buried with, Ar. Pl. 556 :—Pass., χρήματα καταλει- φθέντα Isae. Cleon. § 49, etc. 3. in Med., simply, to leave in a cet- tain state, κόλπον βαθὺν καταλιπόμενος τοῦ κιθῶνος Hdt. 6.125. ΤΠῚ to forsake, abandon, leave in the lurch, οὕτω δὴ μέμονας Τρώων πόλιν... καλλείψειν ; says Ulysses to Agamemnon, II. 14. 88; καταλείψουσι πόλιν, of the Trojans, 22. 383; πολλοὺς καταλείψομεν we shall leave many upon the field, 12. 226, cf. 17. 91; also c. inf., κάλλιπεν οἰωνοῖσιν ἕλωρ καὶ κύρμα γενέσθαι Od. 3. 271; καδδέ κεν εὐχωλὴν Πριάμῳ καὶ Τρωσὶ λίποιεν ᾿Αργείην “Ἑλένην (sc. γενέσθαι) Il. 2. 160; σχεδίην ἀνέμοισι φέρεσθαι κ. Od. 5. 3443 μέλη .. θηρσὶν βοράν Eur. Supp. 45 :—also in Att., κατ᾽ αἰῶνα λίποι Aesch. Theb. 219; μή με καταλίπῃς μόνον Soph. Ph. 809 ; οἰκίας τε καὶ ἱερά Thuc. 2. 16, cf. 3. 58; κ. τὴν δίαιταν not to appear at the trial, Dem. 544. 21; κ. διαθήκας to leave no will, Isae. 76. το. III. to leave remaining, ὀκτὼ μόνον Xen. An. 6. 3,53 k. ἄφοδον to leave an exit, Ib. 4. 2,11; and in Med., Plat. Tim. 73 E; ὑπερβολὴν οὐ κ. χαρᾶς Polyb. 16. 23, 4, cf. 16. 25, 6 :—Pass. to remain, Lys. 197.19, etc.; καταλείπεται μάχη yet remains to be fought Xen. Cyr. 2. 3, 11; καταλείπεσθαι ἑαυτῷ to reserve for oneself, Id. Mem. 1.1. 8. 2. to leave alone, opp. to περιαιρέω, Ib. 3. 2, 4, cf. Arist. Pol. Θ᾽ 7.0. 3. to leave alone, not meddle with, Isocr. 195 A, Xen. Cyn. 2: ΤΟ ΤῸ, ΤΡ, καταλειτουργέω, to spend all one’s substance in bearing the public bur- dens (λειτουργίαι), Isae. 108. 29, Dem. 956. 20; cf. κατά B. VI. κατ-ἄλείφω, fut. ψω, to smear over, besmear, τὸ κηρίον Arist. H. A. 9. 40, 50; κατήλειψε τὸν χηραμὸν τῷ πηλῷ Ael. N. A. 3. 26:—Pass. to be smeared over, καταλήλειπταί τινι Arist. H. A. 5.19, 8; ὅταν καταλειφθῇ Ib. 5. 22, 12, cf. Poll. 9. 112. κατάλειψις, ews, 7, a leaving behind, Plat. Phaedr. 257 E, Arist. Fr.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ρᾶτο be left as aor. in Mosch. 3. 43}}:-.- 10 utter a plaintive sound, lament, wail, Ay. Eq. 11, Ap. Rh. 1. 292: οἰκτρὰ κινυρομένη Opp. C. 3. 217; “πολλά κ«. Q. Sin., etc. 2. c. acc. pers. to lament, bewail, bemoan, τινα Call. Apoll. 20. (L. Dind. μινύρονται ex Hesych.) the bridles ring or clash murderously, Aesch. Theb. 123 (cf. βλέπειν pdvov,”Apn, etc.) ; nowhere else in Trag. Kivipés, a, ov, wailing, plaintive, 1]. 17. 5; γόος Ap. Rh. 4. 605 ; πέτηλα Nonn. Ὁ. 38. 95: v. μινυρός. κϊνύσσομαι, Pass. = xiv éopat, to waver or sway backwards and forwards, Aesch. Cho. 196: cf. κίνυγμα. Kive, ods, 7, Dor. for κίνησις, Hesych. κινώθαλον, τό, in Schol. Plat., as an etym. expl. of κνώδαλον : cf. κινώπετον. κϊνώπετον, τό, a venomous beast, esp. a serpent, Call. Jov. 25, Nic. Th. 27,195; cf. sq.—For the form, cf. δακετόν, ἑρπετόν :—also κἵνωπηστήκ, οὗ, 6, -- κινώπετον, as ἑρπηστής = ἑρπετόν, Nic. Th. 141; v. Lob. Paral. 449. KiEdAANs, ov, 6, a highway robber, κ. καὶ λῃστής Democr. ap. Stob. 279.11; εἴ τις κιξάλλας ὑποδέχοιτο Inscr. Teia in C. 1. 3044. 19: (Hesych. κιξάλης᾽ φώρ, κλέπτης : Phot. Kikas: τοὺς ἐν ὁδῷ λῃστάς : Io. Gramm. de Dial. Ion, κυττάλης᾽ κλέπτης) :—hence Verb κιξαλλεύω, to commit highway robbery, C. 1. ibid. 18; and Subst. κιξαλία, ἡ, Hesych. κιό-κρᾶνον, τό, the capital of a column, C.1. 160. 29, Plat. Com. Aak. 4, ubi v. Mein., Xen. Hell. 4. 4, 5, ubi v. L. Dind.; cf. κιονόκρανον. Kiovndov, Adv., (κίων) like a pillar, γράφειν «x. A. B. 784, 787. KloviKds, 7, dv, (κίων) of a pillar, Eust. 1390. 18. II. (κίων 111) with a diseased uvula, Galen. 14. 509. κιόνιον, τό, Dim. of κίων, a small pillar, C.1. 481, 4808, Poll. 7. Bo II. the little central column in a snail’s shell, Diosc. 2. 6. Ktovis, (dos, ἡ, Dim. of κίων, but only used, like Lat. columella, of the uvula, Aretae. Caus. M. Ac. 1. 4, Cur. M. Ac. 1. 8. κτονίσκος, 6, Dim. of κίων, Ath. 514 Ὁ, Joseph. A. J. 8. 3, 6. KloviTys, ov, ὃ, -- στηλίτης, Eust. Opusc. 190. 2., 101. 40. as Adj. like a pillar, Ib. 111. 74. κιονο-ειδής, ἔς, like a pillar, Eumath. p. 9, Eust. 1399. 33. Ktovo-Kpavov, τό, later form for κιόκρανον, Strab. 198, Diod. 5. 47, etc. κτονοφορέω, to bear the pillars of heaven, of Atlas, Eust. 1390. Io. κϊονο-φόρος, ον, pillar-bearing, Eust. ad Dion. P. 66. κίραφος, 6, and Lacon. κίρα, 7, a fox, Hesych. Kipkaia, ἡ, an uncertain plant, v. Sprengel Diosc. 3. 124 (134) :—Ktp- kata ῥίζα, used as a charm, Apollod. 3. 15, 1. κίρκη, 7, an unknown bird, Ael. N. A. 4. 5. Κίρκη, 7, Circé, an enchantress, dwelling in the oceanic island Aea, daughter of Helios and Persé, Od. 10. 136 sq. (or, acc. to Hes. Th. 957, Perseis). κιρκ-ἡλᾶτος, ov, chased by a hawk, ἀηδών Aesch. Supp. 62.