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

  shriek, cry, wail, in Hom. and Trag. always of women, as Il. 18. 37, Od. 2. 361, εἴς. ; κλαῖον καὶ ἐκὠκῦον 19.541; often with an Adv., iy ἐκώκῦε Il. 19. 284, cf. Od. 4. 250, etc. ; ὀξὺ δὲ κωκύσασα (opp. to βαρὺ στενάχων, of the man), Il. 18. 71; κὠκῦσεν δὲ μάλα μέγα 22. 407; also in late Prose, as Plut. 2. 357 C, etc.; even of men, Luc. Ὁ. Mort. 21.1; and so At., as an execration, μακρὰ κωκύειν κελεύω σε Ran. 24; οἰμώζοι γ᾽ ἂν καὶ κωκύοι Eccl. 648. 2. ο. acc. to lament or shriek over one dead, also properly of women, κώκυσ᾽ ἐν λεχέεσσιν ἑὸν πόσιν Od. 24. 295; ἐμὴν μοῖραν «. Aesch. Ag. 1214, cf. Soph, Ant. mat 204, 1302 ;—comnically, of men, κωκύσεσθε τὰς τρίχας μακρά Ar. Lys. 1222.—Also in late Prose, as Luc. D. Mort. 10. 12, etc. [Ὁ in Hom. before a vowel, v before a conson., see the examples above. Later Ὁ sometimes before a vowel, κωκῦοι Ar. Eccl. 1. c.; κωκύουσα Bion 1. 23, Q.Sm.; κωκύεσκε Ib. 3. 460.] κωλαγρετέω, to be a κωλαγρέτης, Ruhnk. Tim. p. 172: κρέτησαν in C. I. 3660. κωλ-αγρέτης or -ακρέτηξ, ov, 6, (the former form preferred by Schol. Ar. and Timae., while Phot. and Suid. give the latter) :—collector of the pieces at a sacrifice, name of an ancient magistracy at Athens, originally entrusted with the general charge of the finances, which was transferred to the Apodectae by Cleisthenes. From his time they only had charge of the public table in the Prytaneion, until Pericles assigned to them the payment of the dicasts, Ar. Vesp. 695, Av. 1541; v. Bockh P. E. 1. 232., 2. 84, Ruhnk. Tim. ; κωλαγρέτου γάλα, comically for the μισθὸς δικα- στικός, Ar. Vesp. 724. (Said to be derived from their having the legs of the victims as a perquisite, ἐκ τοῦ ἀγείρειν τὰς KwWAGS.) κωλάριον, τό, Dim. of κῶλον, a fragment of a verse, hemistich, Schol. Ar. Pac. 179, Eust. 881. 42. kwAeés, 6,=sq., Epich. 70 Ahr., Galen. Lex. Hipp. κωλῆ, 7, contr. from κωλέα, which occurs in Anaxipp. Ἔγκαλ. 1. 38: (κῶλον) :—the thigh-bone with the flesh on it, the ham, esp. of a swine, Ar. Pl. 1128, Fr. 5, Xen. Cyn. 50, 30, Comici ap. Ath. 368 D; ἐρίφων Xenophan. 5.13; Bods #. Luc. Lexiph. 6; the portion of the priestess at a sacrifice, C. I. 2656. 10.—Synon. forms are κωλεός, κωλήν, cf. κὠώληψ ; κωλία in Hesych. is prob. Boeot., v. Schmidt. IL. membrum virile, Ar. Nub. 1018, cf. 989. κωλήν, ἢ ἢνος, ἡ, -εκωλῆ, the thigh, leg, κωλῆνες νεβρῶν Eur. Fr. 678 ; ἐρίφου Eupol. Αὐτολ. 2; κ. ὑῶν hams, Hipp. 1227 B:—in pl. also all the bones of the leg, Arist. Η. A. 2. 7, 7:—Dim. κωληνάριον, τό, Schol. Ar. Pl. 1129, κώληψ, ηπος, 7, (κωλῆ) the hollow or bend of the knees, also ἰγνύα, Lat. poples, Il. 23. 726, Nic. Th. 424, Suid.

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

  τάφος [ἃ], ὁ, (v. sub θάπτω) a burial, funeral, Lat. irae ll. 23. 619, Od. 4. 547, Hes., Soph., etc. ; δαινύναι τάφον to give a funeral-feast, like γάμον δαινύναι, Il. 23. 29, Od, 3. 309 ; τελέσαι τάφον" Ἕκτορι δίῳ to per- form the rites of burial, 1]. 24. 660; so, τιμᾶν τάφῳ τινά Aesch. Theb. 1046; τάφῳ κτερίζειν Soph. Ant. 203 ; τάφον τινὸς θέσθαι Id. Ο. T. 14473 τ. περιστέλλειν νεκροῦ Id. Aj. 1170 ; ταφοῦ τυχεῖν to obtain the rites of burial, Eur. Hec. 47; τοιόσδε ὃ τ. ἔγένετο Thuc. 2. 47; also in pl. of a single funeral, like ταφή, Plat. Rep. 414 A, etc. 2. the act of burying, τοῦδε τοῦ τ. φήσεις μετασχεῖν Soph. Ant. 534. II. reflex πσήμαντοξ, Pers. 686, Cho. 168, Soph. ΕἸ. 1218 sq., etc., but never so in Hom. ;—so in pl., of ἃ single grave, Hdt. 4. 127, Soph. O. C. 411; ὄντες ἐν τάφοις though dead and buried, Aesch. Eum. 767 ; μέγας γὙ ὀφθαλμὸς of πατρὸς τάφοι his being buried, Soph. Ὁ. T. go7. 2. ἔμψυχός τις τ. a ‘living skeleton,’ Luc. D. Mort. 6, 2 τάφος [a], cos, τό, (v. sub τέθηπαν. astonishment, amazement, τάφος Ede πάντας Od. 21. 122; τάφος δέ οἱ ἦτορ ἵκανεν 23. 93.,24. 445; dat. τάφει in Ibyc. 52. Τάφος, ἡ, old name of one of the small islands between Acarnania and Leucadia, N. W. of the Echinades, perhaps the modern Meganisi, Nitzsch Od. 131. ταφρεία, ἡ, α making ο΄ ditches or trenches, Dem. 325 5, etc. II. -- τάφρος, Dio C. 36. 37. τάφρευμα, τό, a ditch already made, Plat. Legg. 761 B, Dio C. τάφρευσις, ews, ἣ, a digging, method of digging, Acl. N. Α. 9. 8. ταφρεύω, to make a ditch, Plat. Legg. 760 E, 778 E, Xen., etc.; 7. Τὰ: φρους Aeschin, 87. 29. 20, Polyb. 5. 2 11. the | grave itself, comb, Hes. Sc. 477, Pind. 1. 8 (7). 126, Hdt. 2.136, Aesch. | g , , ταὐτοεπέω --- ταχυθάνατος, τάφρη. ἡ, Ion. for τάφρος, Hdt. 4. 28, 201, ubi ν. Schweigh. ταφρο-βολέω, to throw up the earth from a ditch, Gloss. ταφρο- eds, és, ditch-like, trench-like, Schol. Il. 2.153. ταφρο- ποιέω, to make α trench for besieging, Diod. Excerpt. 502. 68. τάφρος, ἢ, (ν. θάπτω), a ditch, trench, ‘often’ in Hom. (esp. in II.) ; τάφρον ὀρύσσειν 1]. 7. 341, etc. ; τ. ἐλαύνειν to draw a trench, Ib. 450; so Hdt. 4. 3, and Att.; ταφρῶν ὕπερ over the trenches, Soph. Aj. 1279 :— some very late writers used it as masc., and so it is found in a MS. of Alcidam. 184. 23: but in Call. Del. 37, βαθὺν ἥλαο τάφρον, βαθύν is Ep. for βαθεῖαν, as often in such words. The modern Greek form τράφος occurs in Tab. Heracl. (Ὁ. 1. 5774. 130., 5775-51). ταφρώδηςσ, ες, contr. for ταφροειδής, A. B. 394. ταφρωρύχος [Ὁ], 6, (ὐρύσσω) a sapper and miner, Diog. L. 4. 23. τἄφών, ν. sub τέθηπα.

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

  χῆρος, a, ov, v. sub χήρα II. II. χῆρος, 6, v. sub χήρα 1. 3. χηροσύνη, ἡ, bereavement, widowhood, Epigr. Gr. 370, 574, 4].; x. πόσιος Ap. Rh. 4. 1046. Χηρο-τροφεῖον, 76, a widows-home, Sozom. H. E. 5.16. χηρόω, fut. wow, trans. to make desolate, χήρωσε δ᾽ ἀγυιάς Il. 5. 642: esp. to make a woman desolate, make her a widow (cf. χήρα), χήρωσας δὲ γυναῖκα did’st widow her, 17. 36 ;—S0, Πριάμου γαῖ᾽ ἐχήρωσ᾽ Ἑλλάδα Eur. Cycl. 304 :—Med. - ἐχηρώσαντο πολῆα Q. Sm. 9. 351. 2. c. gen, to bereave, ἠελίου χήρωσεν. [αὐτόν] Anth. Ρ. 7. 1723 πνοιῆς Ib. 7. 28} :—Pass., πολλῶν ἂν ἀνδρῶν ἥδ᾽ ἐχηρώθη πόλις would have been bereft of .., Solon 36; “Apyos ἀνδρῶν ἐχηρώθη Hdt. 6. 83. 3. c. acc. to leave, Sorsake, ἀελίου χήρωσεν αὐγάς Arist. Fr. 625. 20. II. intr., like χηρεύω, to be bereft of .., τινος Theogn. 950 :—absol. to live in widowhood, Plut. 2. 749 D. χήρωσις, ews, ἡ, bereavement, Scholl. Il. 1. 13, Soph. ΕἸ. 308. χηρωσταί, ὧν, of, (xnpdw) in Il. 5.158 (χηρωσταὶ δὲ διὰ κτῆσιν δατέ- ovto), Hes. Th. 607, Q.5m. 8. 299, appears to be rightly explained by Schol. Hes. and Hesych., as of μακρόθεν (or πορρῶθεν) συγγενεῖς, far- off kinsmen, who seize and divide among themselves the property of one who dies without heirs (yjpos): others take it δ5 -- ὀρφανιστής, one who acts as a guardian to widows and orphans, v. Eust. 533. 31. χἠσεῖτε, Dor. crasis for καὶ ἥσετε (fut. of ἵημι), Ar. Ach. 747. χητεία, ἡ, want, need, Hesych. XNTEL0S, a, ov, in want, bereaved, Eust. 1697. 27 (as ν. 1. for κήτειοι). χητίζω, = χατίζω, E.M. 811. 45. χῆτις, ἡ, -- χῆτος, χήτι συμμάχων (v. 1. χήτεϊ) Hdt. 9. 11; χήτει οἰκείων Plat. Phaedr. 239 Ὁ (in Timae. Lex. this is referred to χῆτιϑ). —This form, like χῆτος, seems to be used only i in the dat. Χῆτος, cos, τό, want, need, c. gen. Pers., χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ᾽ ἀνδρός from want or need of such a man, Il. 6. 463; χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ᾽ υἷος Il. 19. 324; χήτει ἐνευναίων Od. 16.35; χήτεϊ λαῶν ἢ. Ap. 78; χήτεϊ .. νοήματος Orph. Lith. 76 :—cf. χῆτις. χητοσύνη, 77, need, destitution, loneliness, Anth. P. 9. 408. χἤφθα, Dor. crasis for καὶ ἥφθη (aor. 1 pass. of ἅπτω), Theocr. χθάμᾶλο-πτήτης, ov, 6, flying near the ground, name of a kind of hawk, Arist. H. A. 9. 36, 1, cf. Ael. N. Α. 9. 52.

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

  7.601. Ὁ ἀλᾶπαδνός, 4, dv, (ἀλαπάζω) easily exhausted, i. 6. powerless, feeble, στίχες, σθένος, μῦθος, etc., Il. 4. 330, Od. 18. 373, h. Hom. Merc. 334, al., cf. Hes. Op. 435; Comp., ἀλαπαδνότεροι γὰρ ἔσεσθε Il. 4. 305.—Ep. word, used by Aesch. without the a euphon. (cf. ἀλαπάζω), δύαις λαπαδνόν being restored by Musser. for λέπαδνον in Eum. 562. ἀλᾶπαδνοσύνη. 7, feebleness, Q. Sm. 7. 12. ἀλἄπάζω [GA], Ep. impf. ἀλάπαζον 1]. 11. 503 : fut. άξω 2. 367, Aesch. : Ep. aor. ἀλάπαξα II. 750, Theogn. 951 :—Pass., Il. 24. 245: aor. ἀλαπάχθην (ἐξ--) Or. Sib. To empty, drain, exhaust, Od. 17. 424; GA. πόλιν to sack or plunder it, Il. 2. 367; and of men, Zo over- power, destroy, 5. 166., II. 503, al.: metaph., [οἶνος] é« xpadias ἀνίας ἀνδρῶν aA. Panyas. ap. Ath. 37 C. Ep. word (cf. ἐξαλαπάζω) used by Aesch. without the a euphon. (cf. ἀλαπαδνός), λαπάξειν ἄστυ Καδμείων βίᾳ Theb. 47, 531; and Triclin. gave κτήνη... Μοῖρα λαπάξει (for Mop’ ἀλαπάξει) in Ag. 130. (The Root appears to be AATI with a prefixed, cf. λαπάσσω : but Curt. hesitates to connect these words with λάπτω, 4. v.) : ἅλας, ros, τό, (GAs) salt, acc. to Suid. only used in the proverb ἅλασιν ὕει ; but the nom. occurs in Arist. Mirab. 138, and often in late Prose, as Plut. 2. 668 F, Ev. Matt. 5. 13, etc. éhactaivw,=sq., Hesych. ἀλαστέω, (ἄλαστος) to be full of wrath, ἠλάστεον δὲ θεοί (as trisyll.) Il. 15. 21; @pwtey .., καὶ ἀλαστήσας ἔπος ηὔδα 12. 163, cf. Call. Del. 239, etc., and v. ἐπαλαστέω. ἀλαστορία, 7, wickedness, Joseph. A. J. 17. I, I. ἀλάστορος, ον, under the influence of an ἀλάστωρ, Aesch. Fr. go (in acc. masc. ἀλάστορον) : suffering cruelly, ἀλαστόροισιν ὀμμάτων κύκ- Aos Soph. Ant. 974 (lyr.). ἄλαστος, ον, lon. ἄληστος Philo: (a privat., λαθεῖν, χήθομαι). Not to be forgotten, insufferable, unceasing, πένθος, ἄχος 1]. 24. 105, Od. 4. 108, Hes. Th. 467, cf. Aesch. Pers. 990; ἔπαθον ἄλαστα Soph. O. C. 538: neut. as Adv., ἄλαστον ὀδύρομαι I wail incessant, Od. 14. 174. 2. of persons, as in 1]. 22. 261, where Achilles calls Hector ἄλαστε, thou whom I will never forget nor forgive !—an accursed wretch, Soph. O. C. 14823; so, πατρὸς... aA. αἷμα Ib. 1672: cf. ἀλά- orwp. Poét. word, used by Trag. only in lyr. passages. ἀλάστωρ, opos, 6, the Avenging Deity, destroying angel, Lat. Deus Vindex, with or without δαίμων, often in Trag., as Aesch. Pers. 354, Ag. I501, 1508; dA. obuds Soph. O. C. 788 ; ἐὲ ἀλαστόρων νοσεῖν Id. Tr. 12353; GA. Πελοπιδῶν, proverb. of utter ruin, Xenarch. Bout. 1; generally, βουκόλων ἀλάστωρ the herdsmen’s plague, of the Nemean lion, Soph. Tr. 1092; as fem., of the Sphinx, Nicoch. Incert. 4; cf. μιάστωρ τι. ΤΙ. pass. he who suffers from such vengeance, a pol- luted or accursed wretch, Aesch. Eum. 236, Soph. Aj. 3743 μιαροὶ... kal κόλακες καὶ ἀλάστορες Dem. 324. 21; βάρβαρόν τε...

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  instance, about how Curt Lemon had gone trick-or-treating on Halloween. A dark, spooky night, and so Lemon put on a ghost mask and painted up his body all different colors and crept across a paddy to a sleeping village— almost stark naked, the story went, just boots and balls and an M-16—and in the dark Lemon went from hootch to hootch—ringing doorbells, he called it—and a few hours later, when he slipped back into the perimeter, he had a whole sackful of goodies to share with his pals: candles and joss sticks and a pair of black pajamas and statuettes of the smiling Buddha. That was the story, anyway. Other versions were much more elaborate, full of descriptions and scraps of dialogue. Rat Kiley liked to spice it up with extra details: "See, what happens is, it's like four in the morning, and Lemon sneaks into a hootch with that weird ghost mask on. Everybody's asleep, right? So he wakes up this cute little mama-san. Tickles her foot. "Hey, Mama-san,' he goes, real soft like. 'Hey, Mama-san—trick or treat!' Should've seen her face. About freaks. I mean, there's this buck naked ghost standing there, and he's got this M-16 up against her ear and he whispers, "Hey, Mama-san, trick or fuckin’ treat!' Then he takes off her pj's. Strips her right down. Sticks the pajamas in his sack and tucks her into bed and heads for the next hootch." Pausing a moment, Rat Kiley would grin and shake his head. "Honest to God," he'd murmur. "Trick or treat. Lemon—there's one class act." To listen to the story, especially as Rat Kiley told it, you'd never know that Curt Lemon was dead. He was still out there in the dark, naked and painted up, trick-or-treating, sliding from hootch to hootch in that crazy white ghost mask. But he was dead. In September, the day after Linda died, I asked my father to take me down to Benson's Funeral Home to view the body. I was a fifth grader then; I was curious. On the drive downtown my father kept his eyes straight ahead. At one point, I remember, he made a scratchy sound in his throat. It took him a long time to light up a cigarette. "Timmy," he said, "you're sure about this?" I nodded at him. Down inside, of course, I wasn't sure, and yet I had to see her one more time. What I needed, I suppose, was some sort of final confirmation, something to carry with me after she was gone. When we parked in front of the funeral home, my father turned and looked at me. "If this bothers you," he said, "just say the word. We'll make a quick getaway. Fair enough?" "Okay," I said. "Or if you start to feel sick or anything—" "Tl won't," I told him.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  I needed that kind of miracle. At some point I had come to understand that Linda was sick, maybe even dying, but I loved her and just couldn't accept it. In the middle of the summer, I remember, my mother tried to explain to me about brain tumors. Now and then, she said, bad things start growing inside us. Sometimes you can cut them out and other times you can't, and for Linda it was one of the times when you can't. I thought about it for several days. "All right," I finally said. "So will she get better now?" "Well, no," my mother said, "I don't think so." She stared at a spot behind my shoulder. "Sometimes people don't ever get better. They die sometimes." I shook my head. "Not Linda," I said. But on a September afternoon, during noon recess, Nick Veenhof came up to me on the school playground. "Your girlfriend," he said, "she kicked the bucket." At first I didn't understand. "She's dead," he said. "My mom told me at lunch-time. No lie, she actually kicked the goddang bucket." All I could do was nod. Somehow it didn't quite register. I turned away, glanced down at my hands for a second, then walked home without telling anyone. It was a little after one o'clock, I remember, and the house was empty. I drank some chocolate milk and then lay down on the sofa in the living room, not really sad, just floating, trying to imagine what it was to be dead. Nothing much came to me. I remember closing my eyes and whispering her name, almost begging, trying to make her come back. "Linda," I said, "please." And then I concentrated. I willed her alive. It was a dream, I suppose, or a daydream, but I made it happen. I saw her coming down the middle of Main Street, all alone. It was nearly dark and the street was deserted, no cars or people, and Linda wore a pink dress and shiny black shoes. I remember sitting down on the curb to watch. All her hair had grown back. The scars and stitches were gone. In the dream, if that's what it was, she was playing a game of some sort, laughing and running up the empty street, kicking a big aluminum water bucket. Right then I started to cry. After a moment Linda stopped and carried her water bucket over to the curb and asked why I was so sad. "Well, God," I said, "you're dead." Linda nodded at me. She was standing under a yellow streetlight. A nine-year-old girl, just a kid, and yet there was something ageless in her eyes—not a child, not an adult—yjust a bright ongoing everness, that same pinprick of absolute lasting light that I see today in my own eyes as Timmy smiles at Tim from the graying photographs of that time. "Dead," I said.

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

  αἰακτός, 4, dv, verb. Adj. of αἰάζω, bewailed, lamentable, πήματα Aesch. Th. 846, cf. Ar. Ach. 1195: lamented, θυγατήρ Epigr. Gr. 205. II. wailing, miserable, Aesch. Pers. 931, 1069. aidvys, Ion. αἰηνής, és, an old poét. word, first in Archil. 38 δεῖπνον ainvés; next in Pind., αἰανὴς κόρος, κέντρον, λιμός P. τ. 161., 4. 420, I. 3. 4;—then in Aesch. and Soph., νυκτὸς αἰανῆ τέκνα Eum. 416; νυκτὸς αἰανὴς κύκλος Soph. Aj. 672; αἰανὴς νόσος Aesch. Eum. 479, 942; αἰανῆ βάγματα Id. Pers. 635 ; αἰανῆ πάνδυρτον αὐδάν Ib. 940; Πέλοπος... ἱππεία, ὡς ἔμολες αἰανὴς τῇδε γῇ Soph. El. 506: of time, εἰς τὸν αἰανῆ χρόνον Aesch. Eum. 572, Epigr. Gr. 263; and so in Adv. aiava@s for ever, Aesch. Eum. 672.—The form aiavés, which occurs as a v.1. in Eum. 416, 479, Soph. Aj. 672, El. 506 is prob. corrupt, v. Nauck Mélanges Gréco-Romains, 1862, 2. p. 441. (The prob. deriv. is from αἰεί, everlasting, for ever, (as it must be with χρόνος, and in Adv. aiavws), whence might come the notion of never-ending, wearisome, as with νύξ; and then that of dreary, dismal, direful, horrible, as in the II. not drunken ——SS other places cited, though this sense is commonly thought to connect the word with aivds.) Aidvrevos, a, ov, of Ajax : τὸ Αἰάντειον his tomb, Philostr.; τὰ Αἰάντεια (sc. ἱερά) festivals in his honour, Hesych.: At. γέλως of insane laughter, Paroemiogr., v. Lob. Aj. 301 :—a poét. form Aidvreos in Pind. O. 9. 166; Nic. ap. Ath. 683 E. Αἰαντίδης, ov, 6, son of Ajax, patron.: hence, one of the tribe Αἰαντίς in Attica, Dem. 1399. 2. Αἴας, αντος, 6; Ajax, masc. pr. n., borne by two heroes, the Greater, son of Telamon, the Less, son of Oileus,; Hom. A nom. Alds occurs in Alcman 68; acc. Αἶαν, Pind. Fr.179; voc. Αἶαν (postulante metro) Soph. Aj. 482, elsewh. in Trag. Αἴας ; pl. Αἴαντες, proverb. of deep tragedies, Arist. Poét. 18, 6. (Soph. derives it fancifully from αἰαῖ, Aj. 430.) αἰβετός, i.e. aiferds, ὃ, dial. form of ἀετός, Hesych. aiBot, bak! exclam. of disgust or astonishment: but αἰβοῖ, Bol, of laughter, Ar. Pax 1066. aiy-aypos, 6 and ἡ, the wild goat, capra aegagros (cf. αἴξ), Babr. 102.8, Opp. Cyn. I. 71. Αἰγᾶθεν, Dor. for Αἰγῆθεν, Adv., from Αἰγαί (an island off Euboea), Pind. N. 5. 68. Aiyatos, a, ov, Aegaean, πέλαγος Aesch. Ag. 659; ὄρος Aly. mount Ida, Hes. Th. 484, v. Gaisf. ad 1. II. Aiyaios (sc. πόντον, 6, the Aegaean, Plat. Eleg. 9. 1, Arist. Meteor. 2. 1, Io, etc. Aiyatwv, wos, 6, Aegaeon, the name given by men to the hundred- armed son of Uranus and Gaia, called by gods Βριάρεως (q. v.), Il. 1. 404, Hes. Th. 714, 817. (Prob. akin to dicow.) II. the Aegaean sea, πόντιόν T Αἰγαίων᾽ Eur. Alc. 595, cf. Salmas. Solin. 1.125 F; where however others take it as Adj. agreeing with the following word ἀκτάν.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  We started to make plans to set up tents so we could sleep at the zoo on some weekends and to acquire a camping stove and canned food for our meals. The possibilities seemed limitless. Spike caught another cat, a silver-colored kitten with a white underbelly and large blue eyes. We couldn’t wait to tame her so we all could begin holding and petting her. We called her Misty. We had created our own little world and we managed to keep it secret. One afternoon I lay stretched out on the grassy embankment in the noonday sun next to Bear. Sergeant Deedle fluffed his feathers in the warm rays. The chickens pecked at the ground. Tiger raced halfway up a sapling. “It’s going to rain when Tiger dies,” Bear said. “What?” I turned to look at her. She gazed toward the animals, but seemed as if she were looking through the scene. “When Tiger dies, it’s going to rain,” she said. I picked at some grass and tried to mentally brush off her comment. Why did she have to ruin the mood? Say something so morbid? What was Bear talking about anyway? I tried to focus on the animals, but couldn’t. I turned on my belly, worry prickling its way through my thoughts. “Why did you say that?” I asked. Bear looked at me, her green eyes glazed. “Because it’s true.” Our private world began to unravel when we added another club member and then two more turned up. Soon a small group of kids was privy to what we had built and wanted to participate. It all came crashing down when one of the boys, Donny, impressed with Spike’s cat-catching skills, tried to catch a feral cat himself and the animal ripped apart his hand with its teeth. By then, some of the adults had gotten wind of our zoo, but were turning a blind eye. That all changed when Donny had to go to the doctor for stitches. It came out in the games that we were catching cats and keeping them as pets and that not only had Donny tried unsuccessfully to catch a cat, but a few of the other boys had done so as well. Someone could get seriously hurt; wild animals sometimes carried rabies, we were told. Immediate action had to be taken. “Kill the cats, all of them,” one of the demonstrators ordered. Again this job fell to Buddy and a few of the other young men. Mayhem broke out among us children as we begged and cried for our cats’ lives to be spared. Some of us appealed to logic, asking about Orangie, a cat that had hung around the dorms for years and never bothered anyone. The demonstrators herded us into our bunkhouses and demanded that we stay inside. One of the newer club members had been bringing Misty around our dorms, and the kitten now sat on our back porch by the double glass doors, mewing plaintively.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  I reached for the door handle as the first shots rang out, resulting in an uproar of sobbing and screaming from the children. One of the demonstrators grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the door. I ran to my room and threw myself on my bed, covering my head with my pillow to block out the sounds of the distant shots. “Please let them get away!” I prayed out loud. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I scolded myself and bit down on my fingers to distract my thoughts. More shots. It seemed to go on indefinitely. The cats will be scared; they’ll hide, I reasoned to myself. Two hours later quiet returned, and we were given the all-clear. Children ran out of the dorms, dispersing every which way, seeking to know which animals had died and which had been spared. As the afternoon faded to early evening, the temperature dropped and the air thickened with moisture that clung to our hair, giving us gray halos. The fog rolled in, unfolding eerie whitish curtains, obscuring our vision. I ran toward the zoo but had to stop because I could barely see two feet ahead. A clap of thunder exploded from the sky, followed by hard sheets of slanting, icy rain. I forged forward, my head ducked to avoid the cubes of ice that fell as if being hurled from above. I heard kids calling out around me. “I saw Orangie! He’s alive. I found him hiding under the porch.” “Where is Blackie?” “Did you see the white cat?” I kept going. The fog thinned, moving rapidly. I broke into a run. At the upper end of the embankment trail leading to our zoo, Bear stood with something in her arms. I stopped then, and I knew as she made her way down, holding a small limp body, the brown and reddish patches of fur all too familiar. Closer still and I could see the perfect round hole a bullet had left in Tiger’s side. The zoo was over. And Bear was Melissa again, standing in the rain, her short hair plastered to her scalp, clothes clinging to her wet, cold skin, a dead cat draped over her arm. Chapter Twenty-FourB ooks “I hear you’re a fast reader.” I stood, hands folded before me in my schoolteacher’s small office, avoiding her penetrating gaze. She was not particularly fond of me and seemed to bear me a grudge for reasons I never understood. A few weeks earlier, I’d argued my case for moving up to the next grade level, but even though I’d completed all my work, she was determined to hold me back and have me repeat assignments for which I’d received sufficient marks. Outraged, I’d pulled folders of my schoolwork from her file drawer, loaded them on her desk and demanded that she take a look.

• 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 The Things They Carried (1990)

  You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen—and maybe it did, anything's possible—even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, "The fuck you do that for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man," and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead. That's a true story that never happened. Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon's face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must've thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him high into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him must've been the final truth. Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It's always a woman. Usually it's an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics. She'll explain that as a rule she hates war stories; she can't understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore. But this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad. Sometimes, even, there are little tears. What I should do, she'll say, is put it all behind me. Find new stories to tell. I won't say it but I'll think it. I'll picture Rat Kiley's face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn't listening. It wasn't a war story. It was a Jove story.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  A few months after that he graduated to crutches and his words were interrupted less frequently by the stutter. A year after the accident, Brett walked and ran about like normal. The only indicators of his having been mowed over by a speeding car were two long scars along his outer thighs from hip to knee and an occasional sticking of words he would repeat five or six times like a scratched record. Chapter TwentyA Visit With My Father “Guess what?” I’d been lying in bed ready to go to sleep when Theresa poked her head into my room, her eyes shiny and happy as she beamed a smile at me. Surprised to see her during non-visiting hours on a school night, I sat up and rubbed my eyes while she made herself comfortable at the foot of my bed. “What are you doing here?” I asked. She covered my hand with hers and made a quiet little squeal. “I’m getting love matched.” “I thought you were love matched to Larry.” She waved her hand as if she were pushing Larry into a cosmic waste bin. “That didn’t work out. He wasn’t the one. But, oh, Celena, my new husband is going to be Andrew. He’s so wonderful! I can’t wait for you to meet him. And he’s really funny; he used to be an actor. He’s the one who sometimes wears the gorilla outfit.” I was intrigued. From time to time a man showed up at the school dressed in the furry costume. He would walk around like an ape, hold out his ape hands for the kids to slap him five and basically make an ass of himself. I never found him particularly funny, though a lot of other people did. As I tried to reconcile the images of her and a gorilla man, my mother talked. “He is going to be your new dad,” she said. A new father. But where was my dad? Did he know where I was? A faint echo pushed through the morass of amnesia. Would I ever see my father again? A familiar heaviness settled in my chest, and when the first warm tears slipped down my cheeks, Theresa, now just a blurry image, asked me what was wrong. She stroked my forehead. “I miss my dad,” I said under my breath. It felt hard to talk. “You miss your dad?” I nodded and wiped at my eyes. She looked away for a long minute. “You know what? I’m going to arrange for you to have a visit with him.” “You can do that?” “I promise.” She smiled and kissed me. When her gaze held mine for a moment, her eyes told me it was all settled. “I should go,” she said. “I’ve already stayed too long.” We hugged each other, and she left after wishing my roommates a good night.

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

  pers. to wash clean, Ar. Vesp. 118 (where ἀπέλου is for ἀπέλοε, v. sub Aovw), Plat. Crat. 405 B, cf. 406 A:—Med. to wash oneself, Il. 23. 41; so, τὸ σῶμα ἀπελούετο Long. I. 13 ;—so, in archaic style, dmoAovpevos Luc. Lexiph. 2, cf. Ath. 97 D, 98 A. 3. c. acc. pers. et rei, ὄφρα τάχιστα Πάτροκλον λούσειαν ἄπο βρότον might wash the gore off him, Il. 18. 345; later c. gen. rei, nat μ᾽ ἀπέλουσε AVOpov Epigr. Gr. 314. 6. ἀπ-ολοφύρομαι [Ὁ], Dep. o bewail loudly, Andoc. 21.35, Xen. Hell. 1.1, 27. 2. in past tenses, to leave off wailing, like ἀπαλγέω, Thue. 2. 46. ἀπολόφυρσις, cws, 7, Lamentation, Schol. Soph. Aj. 596. ἀπολοχμόομαι, Pass. to become bushy, Theophr. H. P. 6. 6. 6. ἀπόλυμα [Ὁ], ατος, τό, filth, Harpocr.: excrement, Galen. ἀπολῦμαίνομαι, Med. (λῦμα) to cleanse oneself by bathing, esp. from an dyos, Il. 1. 313, 314, cf. Paus. 8. 41, 2. ἀπολῦμαντήρ, ὁ, (λύμη) a destroyer ; δαιτῶν amor. one who destroys one’s pleasure at dinner, a kzll-joy,—or, acc. to others, a devourer of remnants, lick-plate, Od. 17. 220, 377. ἀπολυπέομαι, Pass, to be overwhelmed with grief, Byz. ἀ-πολυπλασίαστος, ον, not multiplied, Cyrill. ἀ-πολυπραγμόνητος, ov, not too curiously meddled with, Basil. Adv. —tws, Cyrill. ἀ-πολυπράγμων, ov, gen. ovos, zot meddlesome, M. Anton. 1.5. Ady. —péves, Jo. Chr. ἄ-πολυς, v, not much, single, or few, Damasc. ἀπολύσιμος[ὕ], ov, (ἀπολύω) deserving acquittal, contributing to it, Antipho 129. 4. ἀπόλῦσις, ews, 77, a loosing, e.g. of a bandage, Hipp. Fract. 759. OF a release, deliverance, Plat. Crat. 405 B: c. gen., κατὰ THY ἀπόλυσιν TOU θανάτου as far as acquittal from a capital charge went, Hdt. 6. 136; ἀπ. κακῶν θάνατος Plut. Arat. 54. 3. a getting rid of a disease, Hipp. 178 C, etc. II. (from Pass.) a separation, parting, Arist. G. A.1. 6,4, al.; τῆς ψυχῆς Id. de Resp.17,8; and absol. decease, death, Theophr. H. P.9.16, 8; ἀπ. ποιεῖσθαι to take one’s departure, Polyb. 3. 69, Io. ἀπολυτέον, verb. Adj. one must release, acquit, Gorgias Hel. 6. ἀπολῦτικός, ἡ, dv, disposed to acquit :—Adv., ἀπολυτικῶς ἔχειν τινός to be minded to acquit one, Xen. Hell. 5. 4, 25. ἀπό-λῦτος, ov, loosed, free, Plut. 2. 426 B; ἀπ. ψυχαί souls at large before being embodied, Porph. Stob. Ecl. 1. 380. 2. in late philo- sophical writers, absolute, unconditional, opp. to πρός τι, Sext. Emp. M. 8. 273 :—Adv. -τως, Ib. 161. 3. τὸ ἀπ., the positive degree of comparison, Timae. Lex. Plat. ἀ-πολύτροπος, ov, not versatile, simple, Byz. ἀπολυτρόω, fo release on payment of ransom, c. gen. pretii, ὡς ἐχθροὺς ἀπ. τῶν μακροτάτων λύτρων Plat. Legg. g1g A, cf. Philipp. ap. Dem. 159. 15 :—Med., Polyaen. 5. 40. ἀπολύτρωσις, ews, 77, a ransoming, αἰχμαλώτων Plut. Pomp. 24, cf. Philo 2. 463. II. redemption by payment of ransom, deliverance, Ev. Luc. 21. 28, Ep. Rom. 3. 12, al.

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

  éXeyos, 6, a song of mourning, a lament: at first without reference to metrical form, so that ἔλεγοι were ascribed to the nightingale and halcyon, Ar. Ay, 218, cf. Eur. I. T. 1091, (where οἰκτρὸν ἔλεγον is the prob. 1., v. Dind. ad 1.) :—orig. accompanied by the flute, whence Eur. speaks of the ἄλυρος ἔλεγος, Hel. 185, 1. T.146. But, since the distich consisting of hexameter and pentameter was mostly used in these songs, this distich got the name of the elegiac metre, (though constantly used for poems of far different character); and so in later times ἔλεγος was taken to mean a poem in distichs, Call. Fr. 121; and we even find ἱλαροὶ ἔλ., Anth. P. το. 10; v. omnino Francke’s Callinus (who thinks that the word arose at Athens in Simonides’ time, though Mimnermus gives the earliest example of the thing); esp. pp. 41, 50, 58: cf. ἐλεγεῖον. (Commonly derived from ἔ @ λέγειν, to cry woe! woe! Eur. I. T. 146.) ἐλεγχείη, ἡ. reproach, disgrace, 1]. 22. τοῦ, etc. ἐλεγχής, és, worthy of reproof; of men, cowardly, ἐλεγχέες (cf. ἔλεγ- xos), Il. 4. 242., 24. 239 :—lIrreg. Sup. ἐλέγχιδτος, 1]. 2. 285. etc. ἐλεγχο-ειδῆς, ἐς, like a refutation, Arist. Soph. Elench. 15, 6., 17, 2. ἔλεγχος, τό, a reproach, disgrace, dishonour, δὴ γὰρ ἔλεγχος ἔσσεται, εἴκεν νῆας ἕλῃ κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ 1]. 11. 314; ἡμῖν δ᾽ ἂν ἐλέγχεα ταῦτα γένοιτο Od. 21.329: of men, the abstr. being put for the con- crete, tax ἐλέγχεα base reproaches to your name, Il. 2. 235, al., Hes. Th. 26, Pind. N. 3. 24; ἐλέγχεα alone, 1]. 24. 260; cf. ἐλεγχής.

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

  ἢ ἔ, or repeated ἔ ἢ € ἔ, an exclamation of pain or grief; woe! woe! Aesch. Ag. 1114, etc. The fact that it is always doubled either once or twice proves that the correct way of writing is éé (as in the oldest Mss., e.g. the Medicean of Aesch, and Soph.), or (where the metre requires an iambus) é7, as in several passages of the Trag.; v. Dind. Aesch, Theb. 966. In like manner, ala? is now restored for at αἴ or af ai, on the authority of Herodian, π. μον. λέξ. p. 27. 13. €, Lat. se, v. sub ov, sai. €a, exclam. of surprise or displeasure (orig. imper. of ἐάων), ha! oho! Lat. vak! esp. before a question, ἔα, τί χρῆμα ; Aesch. Pr. 2983 ἔα, τίς ovros ..; Eur. Hec. 501, cf. 733, Or. 1573, al.; éa, τίς éorw; Ar. Pl. 824; sometimes extra versum, Eur. Hec. 1116, Med. 1005, al. ;—some- times doubled, ἔα ἔα, ἄπεχε Aesch. Pr. 688; ἔα ἔα, ἰδού Soph. Ο. Ο. 1477; oft. in Eur. :—rare in Prose, ἔα, ἔφη, σοφισταί τινες Plat. Prot. 314 D. €%, Ion. for ἣν, impf. of εἰμί : in Ion. Prose also éas, gare. éaya, ἐάγην [a], v. sub ἄγνυμι. €aSa, part. ἑᾶδώς, v. sub avdavw. ἐάλη or ἑάλη, ν. sub εἴλω, ἑάλωκα, ἑαλώκειν, ν. sub ἁλίσκομαι. [ἃ ἐάν, a Particle compounded of εἰ ἄν, also contracted into ἤν and ay, ν. sub ἤν, ἄν (ἃ), which by crasis with καί become κἄν :—if haply, if, regu- larly followed by subj. :—for its use and for examples, v. sub εἶ 11, and ἄν A. IT. II. in N.T. and late Greek, ἐάν is used just like the adverb dwpokevias — ἑαυτοῦ. dy after relative Pronouns and Conjunctions, as ὃς ἐάν whosoever, Ey. Matth. 5. 19., 7. 9, al.; ὅσος ἐάν Ib. 18. 18; ὅστις ἐάν Ep. Col. 3. 23; ὅπου ἐάν Ev, Matth. 8. το, etc. [The second syll. of ἐάν is always long, as appears from Soph. O. C. 1407, and Com. examples collected by Dind. Ar. Vesp. 228.] édvdave, Ion. for ἥνδανε, v. ἁνδάνω. ἐἄνηφόρος, ov, (ἑᾶνός, ὁ) wearing a thin robe, Ἤώς Antim. 85.

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

  16.188; ἐξ. Λυδοὺς és μάχην Hdt. 1. 79, cf. Xen. An. 6.6, 36, etc.: 20 lead out to execution, Hdt. 5. 38, Xen. An. 1. 6, το, etc.; ἐπὶ θήραν Id. Cyr. I. 4, 14: Cc. acc. cogn., τήνδε τὴν ὁδὸν .. ἐξήγαγέ [με] Soph. O.C. 96. Ῥ. seemingly intr. to march out (sub. orparév), Xen. Hell. 4.5, 14., 5. 4, 38, etc.; cf. ἐξακτέον : generally, to go out, Id. Cyr. 2. 4, 18; εἰς προνομάς Ib. 6. 1,.24: so also once in Hom., τύμβον .. ἕνα χεύομεν ἐξαγαγόντες let us go owt and pile one tomb for all, Il. 7. 336, as Eust.; (Heyne joins ἐξαγαγόντες with the foll. words, ἄκριτον éx πεδίου, but Hom. never uses the word of things, v. Spitzn. ad 1.). ΟΣ to draw out from, deliver from, ἀχέων τινά Pind. P. 3.91; ἐξ. τινὰ ἐκ τοῦ (jv, i.e. to put him to death, Polyb. 24. 12,13; ἑαυτὸν ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν to commit suicide, Id. 40. 3,5; τοῦ ζῆν Plut. 2.1076 B; τοῦ βίου Ib. 837 E; τοῦ σώματος Id. Comp. Dem. c. Ant. 6 :—intr. to come to an end, Plut. 2. 36 B. 3. to eect a claimant from property (cf. ἐξαγωγή It), Dem. 533. fin., etc. II. of merchandise, etc., to carry out, export, Aesch. Fr. 256, Ar. Eq. 278, 282, etc.; εἴ τις ἐξαγαγὼν παῖδα ληφθείη exporting him as a slave, Lys. 117. 2:—so in Med., Andoc. 21. 14:—Pass., τὰ ἐξαγόμενα exports, Xen. Vect. 3, 2, etc.; οὔτε yap ἐξήγετο οὐδέν .. , οὐδ᾽ εἰσήγετο Dem. 276. 5. 2. to draw off water, Xen. Oec. 20, 12, Dem. 1276. 7 :—so, to carry off by purgative medicines, Plut. 2.134 C, Aretae. Cur. M. Ac. 2. 5. 3. of building, to draw or carry further out, aiwaciay Dem, 1278.3; so, 6 περίβολος πανταχῆ ἐξήχθη THs πόλεως Thuc. 1. 43. 4. of expenses, ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐξάγεσθαι Dio C. 43. 25. III. to bring forth, produce, οὐκ ἐξάγουσι καρπὸν οἱ ψευδεῖς λόγοι Soph. Fr. 717: to call forth, excite, δάκρυ τινί Eur. Supp. 770; so of perspiration, Hipp. Aér. 285 :— - Med., γέλωτα ἐξάγεσθαι Xen. Cyr. 2. 2,15; μικρὰ ἄθλα πολλοὺς πόνους

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Now, in the dull morning rain, the boy seemed frantic. He waded quickly from spot to spot, leaning down and plunging his hands into the water. He did not look up when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross approached. "Right here," the boy was saying. "Got to be right here." Jimmy Cross remembered the kid's face but not the name. That happened sometimes. He tried to treat his men as individuals but sometimes the names just escaped him. He watched the young soldier shove his hands into the water. "Right here," he kept saying. His movements seemed random and jerky. Jimmy Cross waited a moment, then stepped closer. "Listen," he said quietly, "the guy could be anywhere." The boy glanced up. "Who could?" "Kiowa. You can't expect—" "Kiowa's dead." "Well, yes." The young soldier nodded. "So what about Billie?" "Who?" "My girl. What about her? This picture, it was the only one I had. Right here, I lost it." Jimmy Cross shook his head. It bothered him that he could not come up with a name. "Slow down," he said, "I don't—" "Billie's picture. I had it all wrapped up, I had it in plastic, so it'll be okay if I can ... Last night we were looking at it, me and Kiowa. Right here. I know for sure it's right here somewhere." Jimmy Cross smiled at the boy. "You can ask her for another one. A better one." "She won't send another one. She's not even my gir/ anymore, she won't ... Man, I got to find it." The boy yanked his arm free. He shuffled sideways and stooped down again and dipped into the muck with both hands. His shoulders were shaking. Briefly, Lieutenant Cross wondered where the kid's weapon was, and his helmet, but it seemed better not to ask. He felt some pity come on him. For a moment the day seemed to soften. So much hurt, he thought. He watched the young soldier wading through the water, bending down and then standing and then bending down again, as if something might finally be salvaged from all the waste. Jimmy Cross silently wished the boy luck. Then he closed his eyes and went back to working on the letter to Kiowa's father. ok ok ok Across the field Azar and Norman Bowker and Mitchell Sanders were wading alongside a narrow dike at the edge of the field. It was near noon now. Norman Bowker found Kiowa. He was under two feet of water. Nothing showed except the heel of a boot. "That's him?" Azar said. "Who else?" "T don't know." Azar shook his head. "I don't know." Norman Bowker touched the boot, covered his eyes for a moment, then stood up and looked at Azar. "So where's the joke?" he said. "No joke." "Eating shit. Let's hear that one." "Forget it."

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Three years ago, I say, my book came out. Whatever! You’ve got the yeah-buts, she says. If it’s Dev who worries you, notice the ways he’s Pete Karr’s grandson. He is, isn’t he? I say. And it’s true that I see Daddy’s fire in Dev’s limbs. His grit. I’m hanging up, Lecia says. I gotta go make a living. I love you senselessly. Don’t kill yourself till I give the go-ahead. Checking into the hospital, I surrendered to a sobbing that I’d always held back, thinking if I started in on it it would never, ever, ever stop. Then it stops after a week or two, as if a lifetime’s portion of grief has boiled out of me. The ferocious internal motion I’ve been praying would end finally—almost in a single nanosecond—stops. It’s a pivot point around which my entire future will ultimately swivel. That first night, kneeling before the toilet, I let go, as they say. Or call it the moment my innately serotonin-challenged brain reached level X. The change happens before my eyes, the muted colors of the room brightening from gray to a cool azure. Now when I begin obsessively to gnaw on my fears, I try to wrestle them loose from myself (who are these two halves?) the way you’d take a slipper from a Doberman. It’s in my higher power’s hands, I tell myself. They say More will be revealed , not More will be figured out . I feel well enough one afternoon to ring Walt and give him the lowdown. (His wife was ill with cancer at the time, so the call was brief.) You’re in the best place, he says. I wish I’d known you were having such a hard time. That’s the nature of it, though, I say—isolation. But you’re feeling better? You need me to fly out there and bring you a hot-fudge malted? Hold that thought, I say. That afternoon, when Warren and Dev show up, I feel a rush of delight just seeing them. Warren opens the stairwell door with one hand so Dev can slide past him, and the instant stays haloed in gold, for it’s my first conscious memory of something solidly good. Though their afternoon visit is always the day’s highlight, it routinely sends a volcano of guilt up my middle, since Dev always steps onto the ward with such hesitance, a posture almost soldierly in its wary vigilance. (Even now, from a distance of eighteen years, he remembers how scary the place was.) Dev was born into a bold certainty of feeling. About nearly everything, he held convictions. As a newborn, he had the appetite of a jackal. As a toddler, once faced with a tea service at my in-laws’, he’d stuck his fist in the sugar bowl and upended it, sugar spraying all over as Mrs. Whitbread hissed that no other child in that house had ever interfered with a tea .

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  My high school friend Doonie, now the fence king of San Diego County, flies home to help. So does John Cleary—boy next door, first kiss. They show up on the steps as if dismounted from white chargers to shovel out the pigsty of a house. By dusk, it’s down to the baseboards, and I’m alone. John and Doonie head off to drive a final truckload to the dump. My legs are streaked with dirt, and it’s as if some key on my back has unwound, for I’ve dropped in my tracks in Mother’s once magical closet. I’ve folded up where I’d so often played hide-and-seek inside the silks of her bespangled wardrobe, inhaling like so much hash smoke her minty Salem smoke and Shalimar. Other people kept marriage and divorce decrees, birth announcements, scrapbooks. Mother kept clothes—but she’d trashed all the good stuff. Gone the Dior couture and pearl-snap rodeo shirts, the shirred beaver coat the color of clotted cream whose ecru lining had chocolate lace at the hem. Today I pulled off hangers the oddball crap she wore when she got old—a red sweatshirt with Santa Claus on it, a pink one whose cat appliqué had jeweled eyes. (What do you like about that, Mother? And she said, Sparkly.) I strip from the hangers big-shoulder jackets from the eighties and splashy tropical shirtwaists. The slanted high heels my once small feet had disappeared into got upended into the charity box. When the last white polyester blouse slipped free, the coat hangers rang against each other with a high-pitched keening. Seeing that closet so bare brought back when Daddy first hammered it together, for he’d built their whole bedroom out of our garage. We had made this house and grown into and—finally—out of it. When Doonie and John come back from the dump, they find me in that musty closet under a bare bulb and a rod holding dozens of crow-black hangers. I’m thumbing ancient Playboys. I don’t know who these belong to, I say. Get out of there, Mary Marlene, John says. Right before we leave, one of Mother’s old friends shows up with her station wagon. We load in the massive easels on which Mother will never again tilt a gessoed canvas. She’d quit painting, quit buying pretty clothes. Petal by petal, she’s been shedding herself. We box up the rusted coffee cans from which brushes of fine Russian sable protrude like so many furred blossoms. Then John and Doonie drive me in a chilly rental car to a seafood joint with sawdust on the floor. There we all drink sweet iced tea, and from giant ovals of crockery we draw the hard shells of barbecued crabs and break them open with our greasy hands. Napkins tied around our necks, mouths shining with oil, we tear at and suck from the intricate chambers and corridors of those stone shells before they’re dropped on the sawdust floor.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  The one eye did a funny twinkling trick, red to yellow. His head was wrenched sideways, as if loose at the neck, and the dead young man seemed to be staring at some distant object beyond the bell-shaped flowers along the trail. The blood at the neck had gone to a deep purplish black. Clean fingernails, clean hair—he had been a soldier for only a single day. After his years at the university, the man | killed returned with his new wife to the village of My Khe, where he enlisted as a common rifleman with the 48th Vietcong Battalion. He knew he would die quickly. He knew he would see a flash of light. He knew he would fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people. Kiowa covered the body with a poncho. "Hey, you're looking better," he said. "No doubt about it. All you needed was time—some mental R&R." Then he said, "Man, I'm sorry." Then later he said, "Why not talk about it?" Then he said, "Come on, man, talk." He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole. "Talk," Kiowa said. Ambush When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked if I had ever killed anyone. She knew about the war; she knew I'd been a soldier. "You keep writing these war stories," she said, "so I guess you must've killed somebody." It was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right, which was to say, "Of course not," and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while. Someday, I hope, she'll ask again. But here I want to pretend she's a grown-up. I want to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember happening, and then I want to say to her that as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep writing war stories: He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him —afraid of something—and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him. Or to go back: