Guilt

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 Henry and June (1986)

  Later, when he weeps while telling me his father is starving, I sit paralyzed and my pity does not flow. I would give anything to know if he has sent his father some of the money I have given him, starving himself to do so. All I need to know is: Can he lie to me? I have been able to both love him and lie to him. I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. When I loved Henry, as I did those four days, I loved him with a naked body that had shed its costumes and forgotten its lies. Perhaps it is not so with Henry. But love, in all this, trembles like a spear in a sand dune. To lie, of course, is to engender insanity. The minute I step into the cavern of my lies I drop into darkness. I have had no time to write down the lies. I want to begin. I suppose I have not wanted to look at them. If unity is impossible to the writer who is a “sea of spiritual protoplasm, capable of flowing in all directions, of engulfing every object in its path, of trickling into every crevice, of filling every mold,” as Aldous Huxley said in Point Counter Point , at least truth is possible, or sincerity about one’s insincerities. It is true, as Allendy said, that what my mind engenders fictionally I enrich with true feeling, and I am taken in, in good faith, by my own inventions. He called me “ le plus sympathique ” of the insincere ones. Yes, I am the noblest of the hypocrites. My motives, psychoanalysis reveals, possess the smallest degree of malevolence. It is not to hurt anyone that I let my lover sleep in my husband’s bed. It is because I have no sense of sacredness. If Henry himself were more courageous, I would have given Hugo a sleeping potion during Henry’s visit so I could have gone and slept with him. He was too timid, however, to steal a kiss. Only when Hugo had left did he throw me on the ivy leaves, in the back of the garden. I once spent four days with a passionate human lover. That day I was fucked by a cannibal. I lay exhaling human feelings, and I knew at that precise moment he was nonhuman. The writer is clothed in his humanity, but it is only a disguise. My talk the night before about sincerity, about dependence on one another, about the flow of confidence such as one cannot have even with the being one loves, had hit the mark.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  214 James Baldwin want.I don't care about anything else/She moved toward me.I stood perfectlystill.She touched me, raising her face, with adesperate and terribly moving trust, to mine.'Don't throw me back into the sea, David. Letmestay here with you.' Then she kissed me, watchingmy face.My lips were cold. I felt nothingonmy lips. She kissed me again andI closedmy eyes, feel- ing that strong chains were dragging me to fire. It seemedthat my body, next to herwarmth, her insistence, under herhands, wouldnever awaken. But when it awakened,Ihadmoved out of it.From a great height, where the air all around mewas colderthanice, Iwatched my body ina stranger's arms. Itwas thatevening, or anevening very soon thereafter, that Ileft her sleeping inthebed- room and went, alone, toNice. I roamed all thebars ofthat gUttering tovm, andattheendof the firstnight, blind with al- cohol andgrim withlust,Iclimbed the stairs of a dark hotel incompany with asailor. It turnedout, latethenext day, that the sailor's leave wasnotyet endedand thatthe sailor had friends. We wenttovisitthem. We stayed the night. Wespent the nextday together, and the next. Onthe final night ofthe sailor's leave, we stooddrinking together in acrowded bar. We facedthe mirror. I wasvery drunk. I was al- most penniless. In the mirror, suddenly, I saw Hella's face. Ithought for a moment that I had gone mad, and Iturned. She looked very tired anddrab and small. GIOVANNrSROOM 215 Fora longtime we saidnothing to each other. I feltthe sailor staringat both ofus. 'Hasn't shegot thewrong bar?' he askedme, finally. Hella lookedat him.She smiled. It's not the onlythingI got wrong/shesaid. Now the sailor stared at me. Well/I saidto Hella,'now you know.' 1 thinkI've knownit for a long time/ she said. She turned andstarted away from me. I moved to follow her. Thesailor grabbedme. *Are you—is she — V I nodded. Hisface, open-mouthed,wascomi- cal. He letmego and I passed him and, as I reached thedoors, I heard his laughter. We walkedfor a long time in the stone-cold streets, in silence. There seemed to be noone on the streetsatall. It seemedinconceivable that thedaywouldever break. 'WeU,' said HeUa,Tm goinghome.Iwish I'd never left it/ Tf I stayheremuch longer/ she said, later that samemorning,as she packed her bag, TU forgetwhat it'sliketobe awoman.' Shewasextremelycold, she was verybitterly handsome. Tm notsureanywoman canforgetthat/ I said. There arewomen who have forgottenthat to bea womandoesn't simply mean humiliation, doesn't simply mean bitterness. I haven'tfor-

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Had she no idea how much we needed her? I recently read for the first time several fragments of what she had referred to at the time she wrote them as “the novel I’m writing just to show you.” She must have been thirteen or fourteen when this project occurred to her. “Some of the events are based on the truth and the others are fictitious,” she advises the reader at the outset. “The names have not yet been definitively changed.” The protagonist in these fragments, also fourteen and also named Quintana (although sometimes referred to by other names, presumably trials for the definitive changes to come), believes she may be pregnant. She consults, in a plot point that seems specifically crafted to “confuse the diagnostician and frustrate the psychotherapist,” her pediatrician. The pediatrician advises her that she must tell her parents. She does so. Her idea of how her parents would respond seems, like the entire rest of the plot point involving the pregnancy, confused, a fantasy, a manifestation of what might be extreme emotional distress or might be no more than narrative inventiveness: “They said that they would provide the abortion but after that they did not even care about her any more. She could live in their suburbia house in Brentwood, but they didn’t even care what she did any more. That was fine in her book. Her father had a bad temper, but it showed that they cared very much about their only child. Now, they didn’t even care any more. Quintana would lead her life any way she wanted.” At this point the fragment skids to an abrupt close: “On the next pages you will find out why and how Quintana died and her friends became complete burnouts at the age of eighteen.” So ended the novel she was writing just to show us. Show us what? Show us that she could write a novel? Show us why and how she would die? Show us what she believed our reaction would be? Now, they didn’t even care any more. No. She had no idea how much we needed her. How could we have so misunderstood one another? Had she chosen to write a novel because we wrote novels? Had it been one more obligation pressed on her? Had she felt it as a fear? Had we? What follows are notes I made about a figure who at an earlier point had populated her nightmares, a fantast she called The Broken Man and described so often and with such troubling specificity that I was frequently moved to check for him on the terrace outside her second- floor windows. “He has on a blue work shirt, like a repair man,” she repeatedly told me. “Short sleeves. He has his name always on his shirt. On the right-hand side. His name is David, Bill, Steve, one of those common names. I would guess this man is maybe age fifty to fifty-nine.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  While I wait for Hugo in the car I write on a cigarette box (on the back of the Sultanes there is a good bit of rosy space). Hugo has found out that: I have not seen the gardener about the garden, the mason about the cracked pool, have not done my accounts, have missed my fitting for an evening dress, have broken all routine. One evening Natasha calls up. I am supposed to have spent the nights in her studio. And she asks me, “What have you been doing these last ten days?” I cannot answer her or Hugo will hear me. “Why does Natasha call you up?” he asks. Later, in bed. Hugo is reading. As I write, almost under his eyes, he cannot suppose that what I am writing is so treacherous. I am thinking the worst about him I have ever thought. Today while we worked in the garden I felt as if I were in Richmond Hill again, wrapped up in books and in trances, with Hugo passing by, hoping for a glimpse of me. Mon Dieu , for a moment today, I was in love with him, with the soul and the virgin body of those earlier days. A part of me has grown immeasurably, while I have clung to my young love, to a memory. And now the woman lying naked in the vast bed watches her young love bending over her and does not want him. Since that talk with Henry, when I admitted more than I had ever admitted to myself, my life has altered and become deformed. The restlessness which was vague and nameless has become intolerably clear. Here is where it stabs me, at the center of the most perfect, the most steadfast structure, marriage. When this shakes, then my whole life crumbles. My love for Hugo has become fraternal. I look almost with horror on this change, which is not sudden, but slow in appearing on the surface. I had closed my eyes to all the signs. Above all, I dreaded admitting that I didn’t want Hugo’s passion. I had counted on the ease with which I would distribute my body. But it is not true. It was never true. When I rushed towards Henry, it was all Henry. I am frightened because I have realized the full extent of my imprisonment. Hugo has sequestered me, fostered my love of solitude. I regret now all those years when he gave me nothing but his love and I turned into myself for the rest. Starved, dangerous years. I should break up my whole life, and I cannot do it. My life is not as important as Hugo’s, and Henry doesn’t need me because he has June.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  I sighed. Toor, poor, poor Giovanni/ 'Do you believe he did it?' 1 don't know. It certainly looks as though he did it. He was there that night. People saw him go upstairs before the bar closed and they don't remember seeing him come down.' *Was he working there that night?' 'Apparently not. He was just drinking. He and Guillaume seemed to have become friendly again.' Tou certainly made some peculiar friends while I was away.' They wouldn't seem so damn peculiar if one of them hadn't got murdered. Anyway, none of them were my friends—except Giovanni.' Tou lived with him. Can't you tell whether he'd commit murder or not?' 'How? You live with me. Can I commit a murder?' that. How do you know I'm what you see?' Tou? Of course not/ 'How do you know that? You don't know 'Because— 'Ah I I loved Giovanni— ' she leaned over and kissed me— 1 love you.' 'Not as I love you/ said Hella. 1 might have committed murder already, for all you know. How do you know?' 'Why are you so upset?' •Wouldn't you be upset if a friend of yours was accused of murder and was hiding some- where? What do you mean, why am I so upset? 201 GlOVANNrS ROOM What do you want me to do, sing Christmas carols?' TDon't shout. It's just that I never realized he meant so much to you/ 'He was a nice man/ I said finally. 1 just hate to see him in trouble.' She came to me and put her hand lightly on my arm. 'We'll leave this city soon, David. You won't have to think about it anymore. People get into trouble, David. But don't act as though it were, somehow, your fault. It's not your fault/ 7 know if8 not my fault 1' But my voice, and HeUa's eyes, astounded me into silence. I felt, with terror, that I was about to cry. Giovanni stayed at large nearly a week. As I watched, from Hella's window, each night creep- ing over Paris, I thought of Giovanni some- where outside, perhaps under one of those bridges, frightened and cold and not knowing where to go. I wondered if he had, perhaps, found friends to hide him—it was astonishing that in so small and policed a city he should prove so hard to find. I feared, sometimes, that he might come to find me— to beg me to help him or to kill me. Then I thought that he prob- ably considered it beneath him to ask me for help; he no doubt felt by now that I was not worth killing. I looked to Hella for help. I tried to bury each night, in her, all my guilt and ter- ror. The need to act was hke a fever in me, the only act possible was the act of love. He was finally caught, very early one mom-

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

  Objection 5: Further, Chrysostom says [*Hom. xxxii in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] that “Moses, by granting the bill of divorce, did not indicate the justice of God, but deprived their sin of its guilt, for while the Jews acted as though they were keeping the law, their sin seemed to be no sin.” I answer that, on this point there are two opinions. For some say that under the Law those who put away their wives, after giving them a bill of divorce, were not excused from sin, although they were excused from the punishment which they should have suffered according to the Law: and that for this reason Moses is stated to have permitted the bill of divorce. Accordingly they reckon four kinds of permission: one by absence of precept, so that when a greater good is not prescribed, a lesser good is said to be permitted: thus the Apostle by not prescribing virginity, permitted marriage (1 Cor. 7). The second is by absence of prohibition: thus venial sins are said to be permitted because they are not forbidden. The third is by absence of prevention, and thus all sins are said to be permitted by God, in so far as He does not prevent them whereas He can. The fourth is by omission of punishment, and in this way the bill of divorce was permitted in the Law, not indeed for the sake of obtaining a greater good, as was the dispensation to have several wives, but for the sake of preventing a greater evil, namely wife-murder to which the Jews were prone on account of the corruption of their irascible appetite. Even so they were allowed to lend money for usury to strangers, on account of corruption in their concupiscible appetite, lest they should exact usury of their brethren; and again on account of the corruption of suspicion in the reason they were allowed the sacrifice of jealousy, lest mere suspicion should corrupt their judgment. But because the Old Law, though it did not confer grace, was given that it might indicate sin, as the saints are agreed in saying, others are of opinion that if it had been a sin for a man to put away his wife, this ought to have been indicated to him, at least by the law or the prophets: “Show My people their wicked doings” (Is. 58:1): else they would seem to have been neglected, if those things which are necessary for salvation and which they knew not were never made known to them: and this cannot be admitted, because the righteousness of the Law observed at the time of the Law would merit eternal life. For this reason they say that although to put away one’s wife is wrong in itself, it nevertheless became lawful by God’s permitting it, and they confirm this by the authority of Chrysostom, who says [*Hom. xxxii in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] that “the Lawgiver by permitting divorce removed the guilt from the sin.” Although this opinion has some probability the former is more generally held: wherefore we must reply to the arguments on both sides [*Cf. [5023]FS, Q[105], A[4], ad 8; [5024]FS, Q[108], A[3], ad 2; Contra Gentes iii, cap. 123].

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I hate June, and yet I know that I also am in her power, and that when she comes back . . . “What I feel with you that I don’t feel with June is that beyond love, we are friends. June and I are not friends.” One cannot escape from one’s own nature, although Henry said yesterday, “There are flaws in your goodness.” Flaws. What a relief. Fissures. I may escape through them. Some perversity drives me outside of the role I am forced to play. Always imagining another role. Never static. When Henry wants to read my journal, I tremble. I know he suspects that I betray him constantly. I would like to, and I cannot. Since he has come to me I have practiced instinctively the faithfulness of the whores: I do not take any pleasure except with him. My greatest fear is Hugo’s desiring me the same day, and it happens frequently. Last night he was ardent, ecstatic—and I, obedient and deceptive. Simulating enjoyment. He thought it an exceptional night. His pleasure was tremendous. When I seem to be overflowing and calling for all the sensual pleasures obtainable, do I mean it? If I felt attracted to some woman in the street or a man I danced with, would I really be able to satisfy my desire? Is there a desire? The next time such a feeling overtakes me, I will not resist it. I must know. Tonight I surrender to a craving for Henry. I want him, and I want June. It is June who will kill me, who will take Henry away from me, who will hate me. I want to be in Henry’s arms. I want June to find me there: it will be the only time she will suffer. After that it is Henry who will suffer, at her hands. I want to write her and beg her to come back, because I love her, because I want to give up Henry to her as the greatest gift I can make her. Hugo undresses me every night as if it were the first time and I a new woman for him. My feelings are in a chaos I cannot clarify, cannot order. My dreams tell me nothing except that I have a terror of being driven again to the point of suicide. One does not get healed just by living and loving, or I would be healed. Hugo heals me at times. We walked out in the fields today, under cherry trees, sat down on the grass, in the sun, talking like two very young lovers. Henry heals me, takes me up in his vital arms, his giant’s arms. And so some days I believe myself well. Hugo has gone away on a trip, and he kissed me so desperately and sorrowfully.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  I took oflf my shoes and lay back on her sofa. I tried not to think. But I was thinking that what I did with Giovanni could not possibly be more immoral than what I was about to do with Sue. She came back with two great brandy snift- ers. She came close to me on the sofa and we touched glasses. We drank a little, she watching me all the while, and then I touched her breasts. Her lips parted and she put her glass down with extraordinary clumsiness and lay against me. It was a gesture of great despair and I knew that she was giving herself, not to me, but to that lover who would never come. And I— I thought of many things, lying cou- pled with Sue in that dark place. I wondered if she had done anything to prevent herself from becoming pregnant; and the thought of a child belonging to Sue and me, of my being trapped that way—in the very act, so to speak, of trying to escape— almost precipitated a laughing jag. I wondered if her blue jeans had been thrown on top of the cigarette she had been smoking. I wondered if anyone else had a key to her apartment, if we could be heard through the inadequate walls, how much, in a few moments, we would hate each other. I also

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  For various reasons I find it inordinately hard to speak about my other brother. That twisted quest for Sebastian Knight (1940), with its gloriettes and self-mate combinations, is really nothing in comparison to the task I balked in the first version of this memoir and am faced with now. Except for the two or three poor little adventures I have sketched in earlier chapters, his boyhood and mine seldom mingled. He is a mere shadow in the background of my richest and most detailed recollections. I was the coddled one; he, the witness of coddling. Born, caesareanally, ten and a half months after me, on March 12, 1900, he matured earlier than I and physically looked older. We seldom played together, he was indifferent to most of the things I was fond of—toy trains, toy pistols, Red Indians, Red Admirables. At six or seven he developed a passionate adulation, condoned by Mademoiselle, for Napoleon and took a little bronze bust of him to bed. As a child, I was rowdy, adventurous and something of a bully. He was quiet and listless, and spent much more time with our mentors than I. At ten, began his interest in music, and thenceforth he took innumerable lessons, went to concerts with our father, and spent hours on end playing snatches of operas, on an upstairs piano well within earshot. I would creep up behind and prod him in the ribs—a miserable memory. We attended different schools; he went to my father’s former gimnasiya and wore the regulation black uniform to which, at fifteen, he added an illegal touch: mouse-gray spats. About that time, a page from his diary that I found on his desk and read, and in stupid wonder showed to my tutor, who promptly showed it to my father, abruptly provided a retroactive clarification of certain oddities of behavior on his part. The only game we both liked was tennis. We played a lot of it together, especially in England, on an erratic grass court in Kensington, on a good clay court in Cambridge. He was left-handed. He had a bad stammer that hampered discussions of doubtful points. Despite a weak service and an absence of any real backhand, he was not easy to beat, being the kind of player who never double-faults, and returns everything with the consistency of a banging wall. In Cambridge, we saw more of each other than anywhere before and had, for once, a few friends in common. We both graduated in the same subjects, with the same honors, after which he moved to Paris where, during the following years, he gave lessons of English and Russian, just as I did in Berlin.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  18Ido not know many people who think they have succeeded as parents. Those who do tend to cite the markers that indicate (their own) status in the world: the Stanford degree, the Harvard MBA, the summer with the white-shoe law firm. Those of us less inclined to compliment ourselves on our parenting skills, in other words most of us, recite rosaries of our failures, our neglects, our derelictions and delinquencies. The very definition of success as a parent has undergone a telling transformation: we used to define success as the ability to encourage the child to grow into independent (which is to say into adult) life, to “raise” the child, to let the child go. If a child wanted to try out his or her new bicycle on the steepest hill in the neighborhood, there may have been a pro forma reminder that the steepest hill in the neighborhood descended into a four-way intersection, but such a reminder, because independence was still seen as the desired end of the day, stopped short of nagging. If a child elected to indulge in activity that could end badly, such negative possibilities may have gotten mentioned once, but not twice. It so happened that I was a child during World War Two, which meant that I grew up in circumstances in which even more stress than usual was placed on independence. My father was a finance officer in the Army Air Corps, and during the early years of the war my mother and brother and I followed him from Fort Lewis in Tacoma to Duke University in Durham to Peterson Field in Colorado Springs. This was not hardship but neither was it, given the overcrowding and dislocation that characterized life near American military facilities in 1942 and 1943, a sheltered childhood. In Tacoma we were lucky enough to rent what was called a guest house but was actually one large room with its own entrance. In Durham we again lived in one room, this one not large and not with its own entrance, in a house that belonged to a Baptist preacher and his family. This room in Durham came with “kitchen privileges,” which amounted in practice to occasional use of the family’s apple butter. In Colorado Springs we lived, for the first time, in an actual house, a four-room bungalow near a psychiatric hospital, but did not unpack: there was no point in unpacking, my mother pointed out, since “orders”—a mysterious concept that I took on faith—could arrive any day.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  To Fred: “If you want to be good to me, don’t talk any more against June. Today I realized that your defense of me only engraves June more deeply into that groove of my being. Do you know how I learned this? Yesterday I listened to you, you remember, with a kind of gratitude. I didn’t say very much for June. And then this morning I wrote June a love letter, moved by a selfless instinct of protection, as if I were punishing myself for having listened to praise of myself that lessened June’s value. And Henry, I know, feels the same way and acts the same way. But I understand all you said and feel and are, and I like you for it, immensely.” Eduardo says to Dr. Allendy, his psychoanalyst, “I don’t know if Anaïs loved me or not, whether she fooled me or fooled herself about her feelings.” “She loved you,” said Allendy. “I can see that by her preoccupation with you.” “But you don’t know her,” said Eduardo. “You don’t know the extent of her sympathy for others, her power of < self-sacrifice.” To me Eduardo says, “What did happen, Anaïs? What intuition did you have at that moment when you asked me to let you go? What did you realize?” “Just as I wrote you—an awareness of the importance of your conquering me, to give you the self-confidence you lacked, a stirring of the old love, which we mistook . . .” Oh, I am slippery. So he rationalizes, in self-protection. “Then you, too, have a feeling of incest.” The frailty of his confidence (If I conquer Anaïs, I have conquered everything) is so pitiable. I acted for his needs. I didn’t obey my instincts, my imperative sureness that I want only Henry. But when I think I have done good and been utterly fair, it seems I have done evil, in a subtle, insidious way. I have suggested to Eduardo a doubt about his passion, which has been fostered by psychoanalysis, artificially stimulated by it. The scientific tampering with emotions. For the first time I am against analysis. Perhaps it did help Eduardo to realize his passion, but it does not add to his strength, basically. I feel it is a short-lived thing, something painfully squeezed out, a thin essence pressed out of herbs. I see similarities between Henry and me in human relationships. I see our capacities for enduring pain when we love, our easily duped natures, our desire to believe in June, our quick rising to defend her from the hatred of others. He talks of beating June, but he would never dare. It is only a wish fulfillment, to dominate what he is dominated by.

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

  Whether , in the absence of inward consent, a marriage is made by consent given in words of the present?Objection 1: It would seem that even in the absence of inward consent a marriage is made by consent expressed in words of the present. For “fraud and deceit should benefit no man,” according to the law (cap. Ex Tenore, De Rescrip., cap. Si Vir, De cognat. spir.). Now he who gives consent in words without consenting in heart commits a fraud. Therefore he should not benefit by it, through being released of the bond of marriage. Objection 2: Further, the mental consent of one person cannot be known to another, except in so far as it is expressed in words. If then the expression of the words is not enough, and inward consent is required in both parties, neither of them will be able to know that he is truly married to the other; and consequently whenever he uses marriage he will commit fornication. Objection 3: Further, if a man is proved to have consented to take a certain woman to wife in words of the present tense, he is compelled under pain of excommunication to take her as his wife, even though he should say that he was wanting in mental consent, notwithstanding that afterwards he may have contracted marriage with another woman by words expressive of consent in the present. But this would not be the case if mental consent were requisite for marriage. Therefore it is not required. On the contrary, Innocent III says in a Decretal (cap. Tua Nos, De Spons. et matr.) in reference to this case: “Other things cannot complete the marriage bond in the absence of consent.” Further, intention is necessary in all the sacraments. Now he who consents not in his heart has no intention of contracting marriage; and therefore he does not contract a marriage. I answer that, The outward cleansing stands in the same relation to baptism as the expression of words to this sacrament, as stated above [4941](A[2]). Wherefore just as were a person to receive the outward cleansing, with the intention, not of receiving the sacrament, but of acting in jest or deceit, he would not be baptized; so, too, expression of words without inward consent makes no marriage. Reply to Objection 1: There are two things here, namely the lack of consent—which benefits him in the tribunal of his conscience so that he is not bound by the marriage tie, albeit not in the tribunal of the Church where judgment is pronounced according to the evidence—and the deceit in the words, which does not benefit him, neither in the tribunal of his conscience nor in the tribunal of the Church, since in both he is punished for this.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  210 James Baldwin verylife. With each moment, as myj&ngers slipped, Ifelt the roaring air beneath meand felt everything inme bitterly contracting, crawl- ing furiously upward against that longfall. I thoughtthat it was only, perhaps, that we were alone too much and so, for a while, we were always going out. We made expeditions to Nice andMonte Carlo and Cannesand An- tibes.Butwe werenot richand thesouth of France, in thewintertime, is a playgroundfor the rich. Hella and I went toalotofmovies andfound ourselves, veryoften, sitting in empty,fifth-rate bars. We walked alot,insi- lence. Weno longerseemed toseethings to point outto eachother. We drank toomuch, especially me.Hella,whohadbeensobrown andconfidentand glowing onherreturnfrom Spain,began to loseall this;she began to be paleand watchfulanduncertain.Sheceased to ask mewhatthe matterwas,forit was borne in onher that I either didnotknow or would notsay. She watched me. I felther watching and it made me waryandit mademehateher. My guilt, when Ilooked intoher closing face, wasmore than I could bear. We were at the mercy of bus schedules and oftenfoundourselves in the wintry dawn hud- dledsleepilytogether ina waiting room or freezing onthe street corner ofsome totallyde- serted town.Wearrivedhomein thegrey morn- ing, crippled withweariness, and went straight to bed. GIOVANNI'S ROOM 211 I was able, forsome reason, to make lovein the mornings. It mayhavebeen due to nervous exhaustion;or wandering about at nightengen- deredinme a curious, irrepressible excitement. But it wasnot the same,something was gone: the astonishment, the power, andthejoy were gone, thepeace was gone. I hadnightmaresandsometimesmyown cries wokeme up andsometimesmymoaning made Hella shakemeawake. 1 wish,* shesaid,oneday, *you'd tellme what it is. Tellmewhatitis;letmehelpyou/ I shook myhead inbewildermentand sor- row andsighed.We were sittingin the big room, where Iamstanding now. She was sitting in the easy chair, under the lamp, withabook open on herlap. Tou'resweet,' Isaid.Then: It'snothing. It'll go away. It'sprobably justnerves/ It's Giovanni,'shesaid. I watched her. Isn't it,' sheasked,carefully,'that you think you've done something awfulto him by leaving him in that room? I thinkyoublameyourself for what happened to him.But,darling,noth- ing you couldhavedonewould have helped him. Stoptorturingyourself/ *He wasso beautiful,'Isaid. I hadnot meant to say it.I felt myself beginning to shake. She watched me whileI walkedtothe table — there was a bottle therethen asnow — and poured myselfa drink.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  The unproductive thoughts that keep us stuck in the past, beating ourselves up, or blaming others. The “shoulda, woulda, couldas” mess up our ability to recognize all the goodness that’s actually happening in our lives right now—even if the present moment also holds pain. I should have taken better care of myself. I could have caught this sooner. I would have done things differently if I only knew. I could have called my dad more if I wasn’t so selfish. I could have pushed harder for him to do XYZ. I should have allowed him to have that goodbye Zoom party with his friends (a suggestion he made that melted my brain and made me shout, “I’m not ready for that!”). To some degree, the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” are normal, especially when we remember how we humans evolved in order to stay safe. Who hasn’t been a Monday-morning quarterback analyzing better outcomes in retrospect? We all do it. But when left unchecked, the Monday-morning quarterbacking makes it way harder to pick up the pieces and move forward. Which makes sense, as that retrospective focus is keeping us rooted in an unchangeable past. Yeah, I should have done all of those things, but the facts are clear: I didn’t, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Acceptance reminds us to be compassionate with ourselves. Some days, I’m on board with the limitations of my life; other days, not so much. Acceptance allows me to handle the highs, lows, and contradictions. To forgive life so I can spend more time healing. Even if you’ve lost something or someone so important that it feels impossible to ever be happy again, love is still waiting for you. In fact, love never dies. Tapping into that love is how we keep living fully. Loving ourselves through the pain. Through the difficult times and uncertainty. No matter what happens, choosing to love. People come, jobs go, money tightens, hearts get broken—love remains. This is how we survive and eventually thrive again. Life is a terminal condition. We’re all going to die, but how many of us will truly live? When you answer this question honestly, you will be changed in the best possible way, just like I have been. Acceptance is what will help you get there. CHAPTER 7 REST IN LOVE The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. — ERNEST BECKER, THE DENIAL OF DEATH For most of us, death remains our number one fear. Yet end-of-life conversations are often taboo, which is ironic considering it’s the one thing every living being has in common.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  For some, the lack of boundaries between their roles as a caregiver and spouse, child, or other loved one can be extra challenging. You’re the loving wife, but you also have to play medicine sheriff. You’re the loyal cousin, but you also have to act as a personal assistant, helping your loved one stay on top of appointment details. Navigating dual roles (and tasks) is something we do out of love and sometimes necessity. I say “sometimes” because it’s possible that we are so blinded with panic that we don’t realize we could actually ask for help. We think we’re the only ones who can handle the big stuff, when in reality that might not be true. Caregivers often put unrealistic expectations on themselves, trying to do it all and neglecting to let others know when they’re drowning. Sometimes, that’s because making a specific request for assistance can feel like too tall an order—that would mean pausing long enough to even think. Other times, we don’t ask because we don’t want to be a burden on anyone, or maybe we’ve made the determination that our needs are less important. My friend Liz had been keeping vigil for weeks at her sister’s hospital bed, when an unexpected comment finally got her to pay attention to her own self- care. When Liz wasn’t with her sister, she was fielding anxious calls and texts from her sister’s friends. After one friend asked her for emotional support, she naturally obliged. “Wow, it’s unreal how you’re able to take care of her and all of us, too,” the friend said. To Liz, this praise was no gold star. It was a wake-up call. Liz had been moving so fast and juggling so much that she didn’t realize how her own grief and anxiety had turned her into a nonstop supergiver. From then on, Liz was more mindful of what she could and couldn’t handle. She asked close friends to keep her honest and help brainstorm areas she might be able to advocate for more support. If you’re anything like Liz, accepting help can be hard when you are the person everyone comes to, not the other way around. I’m a caregiver for my illness, my family, my friends, my business, my community. And I’m good at it. But these last few years have shown me how easy it is to revert back to self-abandoning behaviors when I’m anxious, depressed, or just plain overwhelmed. While you may believe that you’ve got this, you can’t handle it all on your own (nobody can). If you’re actively caring for a sick or dying loved one, or a loved one with disabilities, I encourage you to set up some much-needed respite care for yourself. Take breaks.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  29 GIOVANNI'S ROOM father had been suffering, was sufFeriJig still. Don't cry/ he said, 'don't cry/ He stroked my forehead with that absurd handkerchief as though it possessed some heahng charm. There's nothing to cry about. Everything's going to be all right.' He was almost weeping him- self. 'There's nothing wrong, is there? I haven't done anything wrong, have I?' And all the time he was stroking my face with that handker- chief, smothering me. 'We were drunk,' I said. We were drunk.' For this seemed, somehow, to explain everything. Tour Aunt Ellen says it's my fault,' he said. 'She says I never raised you right.' He put away, thank heaven, that handkerchief, and weakly straightened his shoulders. *You got nothing against me, have you? Tell me if you have?' My tears began to dry, on my face and in my breast. *No,' I said, *no. Nothing. Honest.' 1 did the best I could,' he said. 1 really did the best I could.' I looked at him. And at last he grinned and said, Tou're going to be on your back for awhile but when you come home, while you're lying around the house, we'll talk, huh? and try to figure out what the hell we're going to do with you when you get on your feet. OK?' 'OK,' I said. For I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that now we never would. I understood that he must never know this. When I came home he talked with me about my future but I had made up my mind. I was not going to go to college, I was not going 30 James Baldwin to remain in that house with him and Ellen. And I maneuvered my father so well that he actually began to believe that my finding a job and being on my own was the direct result of his advice and a tribute to the way he had raised me. Once I was out of the house of course, it became much easier to deal with him and he never had any reason to feel shut out of my life for I was always able, when talking about it, to tell him what he wished to hear. And we got on quite well, really, for the vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in which I myself most desperately needed to believe. For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower, on their abiUty to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their des- tiny can only continue to believe this by becom- ing specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all— a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but like most virtues,

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  102 James Baldwin to be a little higher and the river stretchedbe- fore us witha greater hazeof promise.Every day the bookstall keepers seemed to havetaken off another garment,so that theshapeof their bodies appearedto be undergoing a moststrik- ing and continual metamorphosis.Onebegan to wonder what the final shapewould be. Itwas observable, through openwindows onthe quais and sidestreets,that hoteliershad called in painters to paint therooms; thewomeninthe dairies had takenoff their blue sweatersand rolledup the sleevesof theirdresses, so that one saw theirpowerful arms; thebread seemed warmer andfresher in the bakeries. Thesmall school childrenhad takenoff their capes and theirkneeswereno longerscarletwith the cold. Thereseemedto be morechatter —in that curi- ously measured and vehement language, which sometimes reminds me of stiffening egg white andsometimes of stringed instruments but al- waysof theunderside andaftermath of passion. But we did notoftenhavebreakfast in Guillaume'sbar becauseGuillaumedid not like me.Usually I simply waited around, asincon- spicuously aspossible, untilGiovanni had fin- ishedcleaning upthe barand hadchanged his clothes. Then wesaidgood-night and left. The habitues had evolved toward us a curious atti- tude, composed ofanunpleasant matemalism, andenvy, and disguiseddislike. Theycould not, somehow, speakto usas they spoke toone an- other, andtheyresented thestrain weimposed onthem of speaking inanyother way. And it GIOVANNI'SROOM 103 made themfuriousthatthedeadcenter oftheir lives was,in this instance,none of their busi- ness. It made themfeel their poverty again, through the narcoticsof chatter, and dreams of conquest, and mutualcontempt. Whereverwe ate breakfast and wherever we walked, whenwe got homewe were always too tired to sleep rightaway.We made coffee and sometimes drankcognacwithit;wesat on the bed and talkedand smoked.We seemed to have a great dealto tell — or Giovannidid. Even at my most candid,evenwhenI tried hardest to give myselfto him as hegavehimself to me, I was holding somethingback. I did not, for example, reallytell him about Hellauntil Ihad been livingin theroom amonth. I told him about her thenbecauseher lettershad begun to soundas though she would be coming back to Parisverysoon. Whatis shedoing, wandering around throughSpainalone?'asked Giovanni. *She hkes totravel,' I said. 'Oh,'saidGiovanni, 'nobody likesto travel, especially notwomen.There mustbe some otherreason.' Heraisedhis eyebrows sugges- tively. 'Perhaps shehas a Spanishloverand is afraid to tell you —?Perhaps sheiswith a torero/ Perhapsshe is, Ithought. 'Butshewouldn'tbe afraidto tell me.' Giovanni laughed. 1do not understand Americansatall,' he said. 1 don'tseethat there's anything very hard

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Once it was easy to know who were my people. If we were stripped to our strength of all pretense and our flesh was cut away the sun would bleach all our bones as white as the face of my black mother was bleached white by gold or Orishala and how does that measure me? I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. Under the sun on the shores of Elmina a black man sold the woman who carried my grandmother in her belly he was paid with bright yellow coin that shone in the evening sun and in the faces of her sons and daughters. When I see that brother behind my eyes his irises are bloodless and without color his tongue clicks like yellow coins tossed up on this shore where we share the same corner of an alien and corrupted heaven and whenever I try to eat the words of easy blackness as salvation I taste the color of my grandmother’s first betrayal. I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. But I do not whistle his name at the shrine of Shopona I do not bring down the rosy juices of death upon him nor forget Orishala is called the god of whiteness who works in the dark wombs of night forming the shapes we all wear so that even cripples and dwarfs and albinos are scared worshipers when the boiled corn is offered. Humility lies in the face of history I have forgiven myself for him for the white meat we all consumed in secret before we were born we shared the same meal.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  After the Catholic came the Protestant—a Lutheran of Jewish extraction. He will have to figure here under the name of Lenski. My brother and I went with him, late in 1910, to Germany, and after we came back in January of the following year, and began going to school in St. Petersburg, Lenski stayed on for about three years to help us with our homework. It was during his reign that Mademoiselle, who had been with us since the winter of 1905, finally gave up her struggle against intruding Muscovites and returned to Lausanne. Lenski had been born in poverty and liked to recall that between graduating from the Gymnasium of his native town, on the Black Sea, and being admitted to the University of St. Petersburg he had supported himself by ornamenting stones from the shingled shore with bright seascapes and selling them as paperweights. He had an oval pink face, short-lashed, curiously naked eyes behind a rimless pince-nez and a pale blue shaven head. We discovered at once three things about him: he was an excellent teacher; he lacked all sense of humor; and, in contrast to our previous tutors, he was someone we needed to defend. The security he felt as long as our parents were around might be shattered at any time in their absence by some sally on the part of our aunts. For them, my father’s fierce writings against pogroms and other governmental practices were but the whims of a wayward nobleman, and I often overheard them discussing with horror Lenski’s origins and my father’s “insane experiments.” After such an occasion, I would be dreadfully rude to them and then burst into hot tears in the seclusion of a water closet. Not that I particularly liked Lenski. There was something irritating about his dry voice, his excessive neatness, the way he had of constantly wiping his glasses with a special cloth or paring his nails with a special gadget, his pedantically correct speech and, perhaps most of all, his fantastic morning custom of marching (seemingly straight out of bed but already shod and trousered, with red braces hanging behind and a strange netlike vest enveloping his plump hairy torso) to the nearest faucet and limiting there his ablutions to a thorough sousing of his pink face, blue skull and fat neck, followed by some lusty Russian nose-blowing, after which he marched, with the same purposeful steps, but now dripping and purblind, back to his bedroom where he kept in a secret place three sacrosanct towels (incidentally he was so brezgliv, in the Russian untranslatable sense, that he would wash his hands after touching banknotes or banisters).

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Find Ways to Address these Barriers Once you’ve identified these barriers, you can take steps to address them. If it’s your feelings of guilt or sadness that are holding you back, make an effort to explore where those feelings are coming from and what you can do about them. Consider getting help from a professional therapist if it feels necessary. If the barriers are more practical, start working through some solutions. You may need to consider some relatively significant life changes to address those practical problems (if the angry person is your housemate, you may need to find a new place to live. If it’s a sibling, you may need to address how you handle family gatherings going forward). Know That it Doesn’t Have to Be All or Nothing Disengaging from an unhealthy relationship doesn’t have to mean completely cutting a person out of your life. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll never see the person again. It could also just be cutting back significantly on contact with them. Instead of saying, “I’m done with this person,” and never seeing them again, you might just make the intentional decision to spend less time with them or to interact with them less often. This is important because the idea of disengaging from an angry person entirely can be scary or even impractical depending on who the person is in your life. Disengaging is about making a healthy decision on how much interaction you are going to have with that person. It should be based on a combination of factors, such as the toll those interactions are having on you and what you can practically manage given the person’s role in your life. Be Prepared to Deal with the Guilt One of the most difficult parts of ending an unhealthy relationship is the guilt that sometimes follows. That guilt is normal and even healthy, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done the wrong thing. Guilt is an emotion and, like any emotion, it serves an important purpose in your life. You feel guilt because it’s one of the ways your brain communicates to you that you may have caused harm