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.

Page 6 of 99 · 20 per page

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

  And I’m really sorry I’m not as old as you are and still have all my teeth,” I say. “Hey, while we’re talking about things we want to get better at, you know what I would find such a huge turn-on?” he asks, and I brace myself. “If you shaved all the hair from your pussy.” “All of it? 100 per cent?” I ask. “Yes, that would be so sexy,” he says. “First of all, no one shaves all their hair off. I would cut my vagina and the idea of how itchy it would be growing back in makes me feel like I have poison ivy. Second, it would have to be waxed, which seems unbearably painful as well as humiliating. I don’t wax, the pain of it is barbaric,” I say. “I’d come hold your hand,” he offers. “How generous of you! Yes, that’s exactly what I want, for you to see me naked and splayed open on a table while I writhe in pain and cry like a baby. For hair removal,” I say. “So many women do it, how bad can it be?” he asks. “Bad,” I say. “Just think about it,” he says. “OK, I will contemplate putting myself through extreme pain to present you with a smooth pussy that will make me look like a child,” I say. * The next day, despite my best efforts to remain stalwart in my position on the removal of pubic hair, I google the difference between waxing and sugaring. I am torn, wanting to remain true to my own ideals of beauty and sex appeal but not confident my ideals work for the men for whom I want to appeal. Two out of seven men I’ve slept with have asked me to go hair-free; the first, #5, I was often wary of and didn’t want to alter either my thinking or my body on his behalf. But #6 asks for little from me and gives me so much – feeding me, wanting me to come before he does, buying me gifts big and small that he knows will make me smile or solve a problem. I could do it not because he’s asked me to but because I want to give him a gift, temporarily change a part of my body for the sole purpose of pleasing him.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Those who think that sinning does not apply to them are called “free” by the world. Knowledge of the truth makes such people arrogant.… It even gives them a sense of superiority over everyone else.63 The author goes on to quote and interpret Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, saying, “Love builds up” [1 Corinthians 8:1b] … in fact, one who is really free through knowledge is a servant for the sake of love to those who have not yet been able to attain to the freedom of gnosis. 64 But how was the gnostic Christian to deal with the actual experience of evil—and, in particular, evil found within himself or herself? Orthodox Christians often attempted to prescribe rules for the whole community, but the author of Philip suggests that one can deal with evil only in oneself: As for ourselves, let each one of us dig down after the root of evil which is within one, and let one pluck it out of one’s heart from the root. It will be plucked out, if we recognize it. But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces its fruit in our heart; it masters us.… it is powerful because we have not recognized it.65 The author advises, then, that each person practice self-examination and look for such potential sources of evil as envy, lust, anger, in his or her own intentions, words, and acts. What transforms one spiritually, according to the Gospel of Philip, is continual self-awareness and acknowledging the evil within oneself wherever one finds it.66 This suggests that Valentinian Christians indeed may have rejected the bishops’ commands, ignored community regulations, and followed their inner guidance, insisting that moral acts are essentially private matters that every person, or at least every mature person, must deal with independently. Such independence, as we have seen, threatened church unity and discipline. Bishop Irenaeus charged that Valentinian Christians were concerned only for their own spiritual advantage, indifferent to the church as an institution. He accused them of “having no respect for others” (does he mean for the bishops in particular?) and for “thinking that they are better than any one else.”67 But what bothered Irenaeus even more than the gnostics’ rejection of moral absolutism or their violation of church discipline was that gnostic readings of Genesis threatened the message of freedom that had made Christianity so powerfully compelling to so many converts. This debate over Genesis revealed a major disagreement among second-century Christians, a disagreement whose outcome would shape church doctrine ever after.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, may God give you His blessing!’ said the friar. ‘How nobly you have lived! And your restraint is all the more deserving of praise in that, had you wished, you would have had greater liberty to do the opposite than those who, like ourselves, are expressly forbidden by rule.’ Next he asked him whether he had displeased God by committing the sin of gluttony; to which, fetching a deep sigh, Ser Ciappelletto replied that he had, and on many occasions. For although, apart from the periods of fasting normally observed in the course of the year by the devout, he was accustomed to fasting on bread and water for at least three days every week, he had drunk the water as pleasurably and avidly (especially when he had been fatigued from praying or going on a pilgrimage) as any great bibber of wine; he had often experienced a craving for those dainty little wild herb salads that women eat when they go away to the country; and sometimes the thought of food had been more attractive to him than he considered proper in one who, like himself, was fasting out of piety. Whereupon the friar said: ‘My son, these sins are natural and they are very trivial, and therefore I would not have you burden your conscience with them more than necessary. No matter how holy a man may be, he will be attracted by the thought of food after a long spell of fasting, and by the thought of drink when he is fatigued.’ ‘Oh!’ said Ser Ciappelletto. ‘Do not tell me this to console me, father. As you are aware, I know that things done in the service of God must all be done honestly and without any grudge; and if anyone should do otherwise, he is committing a sin.’ The friar, delighted, said to him: ‘I am contented to see you taking such a view, and it pleases me greatly that you should have such a good and pure conscience in this matter. But tell me, have you ever been guilty of avarice, by desiring to have more than was proper, or keeping what you should not have kept?’ To which Ser Ciappelletto replied:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘That you did indeed rob Tedaldo I have already proved to you just now, for you removed yourself from him when you belonged to him of your own free will. Secondly, I would suggest that you did your utmost to murder him, for it would not have been surprising, in view of the cruel way you treated him, if he had taken his own life; and in the eyes of the law, the accessory to a crime is as guilty as the person who actually commits it. Finally, it cannot be denied that you were responsible for condemning him to wander through the world for seven whole years in exile. So that on any one of the three articles to which I have referred, you committed a far greater sin than by your intimacy with him. But let us consider the matter more closely. Could it be that Tedaldo deserved all he received? He certainly did not, as you yourself have already conceded; and besides, I know that he loves you more dearly than his very life. ‘Nothing was ever so warmly revered, so greatly extolled, or so highly exalted as you were by him above all other women, whenever he could speak of you without giving rise to suspicion. To you alone he entrusted the whole of his well-being, the whole of his honour, the whole of his freedom. Was he not a noble youth? Was he not as handsome as any of his fellow citizens? Was he not outstanding in those activities and accomplishments that pertain to the young? Was he not loved, esteemed, and given a ready welcome by all who met him? This, too, you will be willing to concede. ‘What possible reason could you have had, then, for heeding the insane ravings of a stupid, envious little friar and deciding to treat him so cruelly? Why is it, I wonder, that certain women make the mistake of holding themselves aloof from men and looking down upon them? If they would only consider their own natures, and stop to think of how much more nobility God has conceded to man than to any of the other animals, they would undoubtedly be proud of a man’s love and hold him in the highest esteem, and do everything in their power to please him, so that he would never grow tired of loving them. Did you do all this? No, because you allowed yourself to be swayed by the words of a friar who must without a doubt have been some soup-guzzling pie-muncher, and who in all probability intended to install himself in the place from which he was intent on dislodging another.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  heart of the interconnected debates over the function and status of the clergy, the organization of the Church, and its relations with the State and society. Indeed, it was one of the great determining factors in Christian history. Baptism, all agreed, involved a complete remission of sin by the power of the spirit. But thereafter? The earliest Christians had thought in terms of a short period between baptism and the parousia. But with a receding, indeed disappearing, eschatology, the problem of sins committed after baptism, perhaps during a whole lifetime, became acute. Some, like Constantine, delayed baptism until they were on their deathbeds; on the other hand we have evidence of infant baptism from the second century. How could the baptized Christian be cleansed from sin? Did the Church have the power to do it? Certainly the idea of penance as an institution was unknown to Paul. There were hints of it in the pastoral epistles, and the famous ‘binding and loosing’ text in Matthew (interpolated or not) could be used in this sense. Clement, as noted, thought the Church could restore the lapsed to full communion, and penance had begun to take institutional form by the time of Tertullian. Indeed, it was essentially on this issue, holding as it did the key to many others, that he left the orthodox Church. Tertullian was a puritan and, like most puritans, took an elitist view of the Church. Its appeal and nature were universal, but the process of selection, or election, was strict. Once baptized, a Christian must abstain from serious sin or lose his election; indeed, the fact of a serious post-baptismal sin proved he never had it. This was God’s clear will; there was nothing the Church could do about it, though it had powers of forgiveness in minor matters. The breaking point for Tertullian came, he tells us, when a ‘senior bishop’ (probably Calixtus of Rome), decided that the Church had the power to grant remission after baptism, even of such serious sins as adultery or even apostasy. It was this claim on behalf of the clergy – to him inconceivable – which made the former scourge of the heretics into, as it were, the first protestant. And, once he denied clerical rights in this respect, he was led, progressively, to question clerical claims to separate status in the Church. In his orthodox days, Tertullian had attacked the Montanist-type heretics because ‘they endow even the laity with the functions of the priesthood.’ Now, having denied the penitential power, he became a Montanist himself, and asked, in De Exhortatione Castitatis: ‘Are not we laymen priests also? . . . The difference between the order and the

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They’re being devoured alive by the brutes!’ And then as though he were talking to a friend who would understand him: ‘Roses seem good to me—you know what I mean, there’s virtue about them—the scent and the feel and the way they grow. I always had some on the desk in my office, they seemed to brighten up the whole place, no end.’ He started to ink in the names on the labels with a gold fountain pen which he took from his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, as he bent his face over the labels, ‘yes, I always had three or four on my desk. But Birmingham’s a foul sort of place for roses.’ And hearing him, Stephen found herself thinking that all men had something simple about them; something that took pleasure in the things that were blameless, that longed, as it were, to contact with Nature. Martin had loved huge, primitive trees; and even this mean little man loved his roses. Angela came strolling across the lawn: ‘Come, you two,’ she called gaily, ‘tea’s waiting in the hall!’ Stephen flinched: ‘Come, you two—’ the words jarred on and she knew that Angela was thoroughly happy, for when Ralph was out of earshot for a moment she whispered: ‘You were clever about his roses!’ At tea Ralph relapsed into sulky silence; he seemed to regret his erstwhile good humour. And he ate quite a lot, which made Angela nervous—she dreaded his attacks of indigestion, which were usually accompanied by attacks of bad temper. Long after they had all finished tea he lingered, until Angela said: ‘Oh, Ralph, that lawn mower. Pratt asked me to tell you that it won’t work at all; he thinks it had better go back to the makers. Will you write about it now before the post goes?’ ‘I suppose so—’ he muttered; but he left the room slowly . Then they looked at each other and drew close together, guiltily, starting at every sound: ‘Stephen—be careful for God’s sake—Ralph—’ So Stephen’s hands dropped from Angela’s shoulders, and she set her lips hard, for no protest must pass them any more; they had no right to protest. CHAPTER 21 1 T hat autumn the Crossbys went up to Scotland, and Stephen went to Cornwall with her mother. Anna was not well, she needed a change, and the doctor had told them of Watergate Bay, that was why they had gone to Cornwall. To Stephen it mattered very little where she went, since she was not allowed to join Angela in Scotland. Angela had put her foot down quite firmly: ‘No, my dear, it wouldn’t do. I know Ralph would make hell. I can’t let you follow us up to Scotland.’ So that there, perforce, the matter had ended. And now Stephen could sit and gloom over her trouble while Anna read placidly, asking no questions. She seldom worried her daughter with questions, seldom even evinced any interest in her letters.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Lucy, he is my child! You have to tell me when anything like this happens. Are you able to give him the care he needs? What did the vet say specifically? Should I come home?” “No, no, don’t come home. The vet said he is going to be totally okay as long as we adjust this insulin to the new amount. I can do that. It’s easy.” “I still think he looks depressed,” she said. “I’ll take him to group.” The vet hadn’t exactly said it would all be fine, but she didn’t seem particularly concerned either. I felt strangely jealous that Annika would come home to see the dog. After my mother died, I longed for my sister to take some time off from college to be with me. I verbalized this one time, a few days after the funeral, that maybe she might delay her return to school. She was sitting on my bed behind me, playing with my hair, which was something my mother used to do every night before I went to sleep. It was very quiet; the only sound I could hear was the gentle brush of her fingers against my scalp. “Please stay with me,” I said. “I need you.” But she told me she had exams, and while she wanted to stay with me, she had to go back or she wouldn’t complete the semester. I felt totally rejected, but I did not judge her. I looked up to her, and my world had already been so destroyed by the death of my mother that I couldn’t afford to be angry with her. But it hurt, nonetheless. So instead I judged myself. I made myself wrong for needing someone, for revealing that need. I needed more than the universe could give me. Clearly my feelings were too big for the universe to hold, too disgusting. I would not put them out there like that again. I didn’t even want to have to feel them myself. Well, now I was feeling again and I did not want Annika coming home. If she returned there was no way I could just wander out to the ocean alone at night. I guess I could still go to the rocks and not tell her where I was going—I could lie and say I was going across town or to a café to see some acoustic guitar bullshit. But if she saw me out the window, what would I say I was doing? She would start asking questions. Also, I had a new fantasy. I wanted to ask Theo if he would maybe come with me to the house and stay for a night. I didn’t know how I would get him there. Certainly he couldn’t drag himself across the beach. I doubted he would want me to carry him. But maybe I could get one of those little sand-wagon things, or a bicycle with a wagon on the back.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Whereas Chrysostom proclaims human freedom, Augustine reads from the same Genesis story the opposite—human bondage. As for [image file=image_rsrc2G0.jpg] , the power to rule oneself, Augustine cannot acknowledge it as a reality, or even a genuine good, in his own experience, let alone for all humanity. And Augustine begins his reflections on government, characteristically, with introspection. Recalling in the Confessions his own experience, Augustine instinctively identifies the question of self-government with rational control over sexual impulses. Describing his struggle to be chaste, Augustine recalls how, “in the sixteenth year of the age of my flesh … the madness of raging lust exercised its supreme dominion over me.”28 Augustine was powerless, a captive and victim. Through sexual desire, he says, “my invisible enemy trod me down and seduced me.”29 Of his sexual involvements he admits, “I drew my shackles along with me, terrified to have them knocked off.”30 Acknowledging that his friend was “amazed at my enslavement,” Augustine reflects that “what made me a slave to it was the habit [consuetudo] of satisfying an insatiable lust.”31 Had Augustine confessed as much to a spiritual advisor such as John Chrysostom, he would have been urged to undo the chains that bound him to bad habits and to recover and strengthen, like unused muscles, his own neglected capacity for moral choice. But Augustine in his Confessions came directly to challenge such assumptions. Free will is only an illusion—an illusion that Augustine himself once shared: “As for continence, I imagined it to be in the liberty of our own power, which I, for my part, felt I did not have.”32 As he grew older, Augustine changed his mind. Instead of indicting his own lack of faith in the power of free will, Augustine came to lash out at those who falsely assume that they do possess such power: “What man is there, who, being aware of his own weakness, dares so much as to attribute his chastity and innocence to his own virtue?”33 The aging Augustine then takes his own experience as paradigmatic for all human experience—indeed, for Adam’s: “Being a captive,” he says, “I feigned a show of counterfeit liberty,”34 as, he says, Adam had done, bringing upon himself and his progeny an avalanche of sin and punishment.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Madam,’ said the pilgrim, ‘it is this sin alone which lies at the root of all your suffering. I know for a fact that Tedaldo never coerced you in the slightest. When you fell in love with him, you did so of your own accord because you found him attractive. It was with your full consent that he began to visit you and enjoy your intimate favours, and your delight in him was so obvious from your words and deeds that, though he already loved you before, you intensified his love a thousandfold. And if this was so (as I know it was), what possible reason could prompt you to withdraw yourself so inflexibly from him? You should have thought about all these things beforehand, and if you felt it was wrong, if you felt you were going to have to repent, you should not have had anything to do with him in the first place. The point is this, that when he became yours, so you became his. Inasmuch as he belonged to you, you were perfectly free to discard him whenever you wished. But since, at the same time, you belonged to him, it was quite improper of you, indeed it was robbery on your part, to remove yourself from him against his will. ‘Now, I would have you know that I myself am a friar. I am therefore familiar with all their ways, and it is not unfitting for me, as it would be for a layman, to express myself somewhat freely about them for your benefit. I do this, and I do it willingly, so that you will know them better in the future than you appear to have done in the past.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The world would condemn but they would rejoice; glorious outcasts, unashamed, triumphant! She began to pace restlessly up and down the room, as had ever been her wont in moments of emotion. Her face grew ominous, heavy and brooding; the fine line of her mouth was a little marred; her eyes were less clear, less the servants of her spirit than the slaves of her anxious and passionate body; the red scar on her cheek stood out like a wound. Then quite suddenly she had opened the door, and was staring at the dimly lighted staircase. She took a step forward and then stopped; appalled, dumbfounded at herself, at this thing she was doing. And as she stood there as though turned to stone, she remembered another and spacious study, she remembered a lanky colt of a girl whose glance had kept straying towards the windows; she remembered a man who had held out his hand: ‘Stephen, come here. . . . What is honour, my daughter?’ Honour, good God! Was this her honour? Mary, whose nerves had been strained to breaking! A dastardly thing it would be to drag her through the maze of passion, with no word of warning. Was she to know nothing of what lay before her, of the price she would have to pay for such love? She was young and completely ignorant of life; she knew only that she loved, and the young were ardent. She would give all that Stephen might ask of her and more, for the young were not only ardent but generous. And through giving all she would be left defenceless, neither forewarned nor forearmed against a world that would turn like a merciless beast and rend her. It was horrible. No, Mary must not give until she had counted the cost of that gift, until she was restored in body and mind, and was able to form a considered judgment. Then Stephen must tell her the cruel truth, she must say: ‘I am one of those whom God marked on the forehead. Like Cain, I am marked and blemished. If you come to me, Mary, the world will abhor you, will persecute you, will call you unclean. Our love may be faithful even unto death and beyond—yet the world will call it unclean. We may harm no living creature by our love; we may grow more perfect in understanding and in charity because of our loving; but all this will not save you from the scourge of a world that will turn away its eyes from your noblest actions, finding only corruption and vileness in you. You will see men and women defiling each other, laying the burden of their sins upon their children. You will see unfaithfulness, lies and deceit among those whom the world views with approbation.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Two of them a day, pages and pages. He doesn’t even mail them; he comes here and drops them off for me. It’s like the more suicidal I am, the more he wants me. When I get out we are going to try and live together. Arnold is going to get full custody of the kids in the divorce and I can’t be arsed to give a fuck. So I’m too crazy to be a mother? Well then, that’s fine. I didn’t make myself this way. It is what it is.” “You sound…good,” I said. “I’m great,” she said, tugging at her hospital gown. “And what about you?” “I’m a mess. I think I may have poisoned my sister’s dog.” “Oh my God.” She giggled. “You did what?” “It’s not funny. He’s dead.” “That beast you brought to my house? You poisoned him? With what, bad Alpo?” “No. Tranquilizers.” “Oh shit.” “Yeah.” “A junkie dog. Jesus, who would have thought? You know, I could tell he had a drug problem. He tried to steal my TV.” She snorted. Now it wasn’t comforting at all to have the old Claire back. Why was she laughing? She was like one of those young boys who shoots animals with a BB gun and then has no remorse. Except I was the one who had killed Dominic. I wondered if we were both inherently evil people. Bad women. Were we? Evil people rarely know they’re evil. Someone had told me that once. What if we were put on the planet to fill some purpose but that purpose was bad? Maybe this was why we had to die. “He was such a sweet dog,” I said. “It’s horrible. My sister is going to be destroyed. I don’t think she will ever forgive me.” “Listen,” she said, “it’s not your fault he couldn’t handle his shit. Never trust an addict, Lucy, not even a dog.” “Stop it. I feel irredeemably awful.” “Well, you’re not.” “Do you ever feel that way? Like you’re the worst one and there is no hope for you?” “Darling, I know I’m the worst one,” she said. “And of course there’s no hope.” I began to cry. “Oh, love, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m guessing it wasn’t intentional.” “No, of course it wasn’t intentional. And he had diabetes. So maybe it was that.” “It probably was.” “I really fucked up this time.” “Listen,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “Your sister can find another dog. But there’s only one Lucy.” I wanted to believe her. I kept trying to wriggle out of the reality of the situation, find some way to prove to myself that I wasn’t a dog killer. But no matter how I looked at it I was a murderer, third degree at the very least. I wanted to see myself the way Claire saw me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Sir,’ replied the maid, continuing to weep, ‘it concerns Ruggieri d’Aieroli. You know what a headstrong lad he is? Well, he took a fancy to me, and what with my fear of him on the one hand and my love for him on the other, a month or two ago I was obliged to become his mistress. When he discovered you were not going to be here last night, he talked me into allowing him into your house to sleep with me in my room. He said he was thirsty, but I hadn’t a drop of wine or water to offer him. I couldn’t go downstairs without being seen by your good lady, who was in the drawing-room, but I remembered having seen a bottle of water in your bedroom, and so I ran to fetch it, gave it him to drink, and put the bottle back again where I had found it. They tell me you’ve been playing merry hell about it, and I freely confess that it was wrong of me to do it, but then everybody makes a blunder occasionally. I can only say that I am very sorry, not only for doing what I did, but also for Ruggieri’s sake, because he is about to lose his life over it. I therefore beseech you with all my heart to forgive me and let me go and see what I can do to help Ruggieri.’ Angry though he was to hear what she had done, the doctor had difficulty in keeping a straight face. ‘You have been hoist with your own petard,’ he replied. ‘For you thought you had a young man who would shake your skin-coat well and truly last night, instead of which you had a slug-abed. Now go and see about saving your lover, and take good care in future not to bring him into the house again, otherwise I shall make you pay for it twice over.’ Feeling that she had emerged with flying colours from the first of her engagements, the maid hurried round as quickly as possible to the prison and wheedled the gaoler into letting her speak to Ruggieri. And after telling him what he was to say to the judge if he wanted to be saved, she actually succeeded in getting the judge himself to grant her a hearing. The judge saw that she was a tasty-looking dish, and thought he would have just one little nibble before listening to what she had to say. Knowing that she would obtain a better hearing, the girl did not object in the slightest, and when the snack was finished she picked herself up and said: ‘Sir, you are holding Ruggieri d’Aieroli here on a charge of theft, but you’ve arrested the wrong man.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In my younger days, I was indeed deeply in love with the unfortunate young man whose death has been imputed to my husband. I was enormously grieved to hear that he was dead, and I have wept countless tears over him, for although I assumed an air of haughty indifference towards him before he went away, neither his departure nor his long absence nor even his unfortunate death has been able to dislodge him from my heart.’ ‘You were never in love with this hapless youth who has died,’ said the pilgrim, ‘but with Tedaldo Elisei. However, tell me: what reason did you have for snubbing him? Did he ever offend you?’ ‘Oh, no!’ replied the lady. ‘He certainly never offended me. My aloofness was prompted by the words of an accursed friar, to whom I once went for confession. When I told him how much I loved this man and described the intimacy of our relationship, he gave me such a severe scolding that I have never recovered from the shock to this day, for he told me that unless I mended my ways I would be consigned to the devil’s mouth at the bottom of the abyss 2 and exposed to the torments of hellfire. I was so frightened by all this that I firmly made up my mind never to have anything more to do with him. So as to remove all temptation, I refused from then on to accept any of his letters or messages. I suppose he eventually gave up and went away in despair. But if he had persevered a little longer, I am sure I would have relented, for I could see that he was wasting away like snow in the rays of the sun, and I was longing to break my resolve.’ ‘Madam,’ said the pilgrim, ‘it is this sin alone which lies at the root of all your suffering. I know for a fact that Tedaldo never coerced you in the slightest. When you fell in love with him, you did so of your own accord because you found him attractive. It was with your full consent that he began to visit you and enjoy your intimate favours, and your delight in him was so obvious from your words and deeds that, though he already loved you before, you intensified his love a thousandfold. And if this was so (as I know it was), what possible reason could prompt you to withdraw yourself so inflexibly from him? You should have thought about all these things beforehand, and if you felt it was wrong, if you felt you were going to have to repent, you should not have had anything to do with him in the first place. The point is this, that when he became yours, so you became his. Inasmuch as he belonged to you, you were perfectly free to discard him whenever you wished.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It would be awfully wicked; in fact I was always told it was one of the worst sins anyone could commit, otherwise I should be only too willing to do as you suggest.’ ‘If that’s the only thing that deters you,’ said Friar Rinaldo, ‘then you’re just being silly. I don’t say it isn’t a sin, but God forgives greater sins than this to those who repent. However, tell me this, to whom is this child of yours more closely related: myself, who held him at his baptism, or your husband, by whom he was begotten?’ ‘My husband, naturally,’ she replied. ‘Exactly,’ said the friar, ‘and doesn’t your husband go to bed with you?’ ‘Of course he does,’ the lady replied. ‘Well then,’ said the friar, ‘since your husband’s more closely akin to the child than I am, surely I can do the same.’ Since logic was not one of her strong points, and she needed little persuasion in any case, the lady either believed or pretended to believe that the friar was speaking the truth, and she replied: ‘How could anyone refute so sensible an argument?’ After which, notwithstanding the fact that he was her child’s godfather, she allowed him to have his will of her. And thereafter, having taken the first step, they forgathered very frequently, for his sponsorship of the child made it easy for him to come and go without arousing suspicion. On one of these occasions, having called at the lady’s house with one of his fellow friars, to discover that she was alone except for the child and a very pretty and attractive little maidservant, he packed his companion off to the attic to teach the wench the Lord’s Prayer, whilst he and the lady, who was holding her little boy by the hand, made their way into her bedroom, locking the door behind them. And having settled down on a sofa, they began to have a merry time of it together. But while they were carrying on in this fashion, the child’s father happened to return home, and before anyone realized he was there, he was knocking at the door of the bedroom and calling for his wife. Hearing his voice, Madonna Agnesa said: ‘Oh my God, I’m done for, that’s my husband. Now he’s bound to discover why you and I are always so friendly.’ ‘That’s true enough,’ said Friar Rinaldo, who had nothing on except his vest, having discarded his habit and his hood. ‘If only I had my clothes on, we could invent some explanation. But if you open the door and he sees me like this, no excuse can possibly do any good.’ Then the woman had a sudden inspiration. ‘You get dressed,’ she said, ‘and as soon as you’ve got your clothes on, take your godson in your arms and listen carefully to what I shall say to him, so that you can back me up later.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  If Augustinian theology, or that of the rabbis or shamans who have also attributed suffering to sin, served only as a means of social control, why would people accept such sophistry? Why do people outside religious communities often ask themselves, as if spontaneously, the same questions, and give similar answers, blaming themselves for events beyond their power as if they had caused—or deserved—their own suffering? The “social control” explanations assume a manipulative religious elite that invents guilt in order to dupe a gullible majority into accepting an otherwise abhorrent discipline. But the human tendency to accept blame for misfortunes is as observable among today’s agnostics as among the Hopi or the ancient Jews and Christians, independent of—even prior to—religious belief. For quite apart from political circumstances, many people need to find reasons for their sufferings. Had Augustine’s theory not met such a need—were it not that people often would rather feel guilty than helpless—I suspect that the idea of original sin would not have survived the fifth century, much less become the basis of Christian doctrine for 1600 years. I am not speaking, now, of cases in which guilt may be appropriate—cases in which people have chosen to take certain risks, or to inflict pain upon themselves or others, with predictable results. Instead I am speaking of those cases in which guilt seems to be an inexplicable, irrational, inappropriate response to suffering. But why would anyone choose to feel guilty? One may know perfectly well the statistical possibilities concerning natural disasters, freak accidents, and life-threatening diseases and regard these—theoretically, at least—as fully natural phenomena. But when such events suddenly threaten (or spare) one’s own life, questions occur, so to speak, in the first person. Like the Azande, one asks not what caused the earthquake, fire, or disease (for this may be obvious enough) but “Why did this happen now, in this way, to this person?” What are we to make, I wonder, of this peculiar preference for guilt? Augustine would, I suspect, take it as evidence that human nature itself is “diseased,” or, in contemporary terms, neurotic. I would suggest, instead, that such guilt, however painful, offers reassurance that such events do not occur at random but follow specific laws of causation; and that their causes, or a significant part of them, lie in the moral sphere, and so within human control. Augustine, like the Hebrew author of Genesis 2–3, gives religious expression to the conviction that humankind does not suffer and die randomly, but for specific reasons. Asserting one’s own guilt for suffering may also encourage one to make specific, perhaps long overdue, changes. Guilt invites the sufferer to review past choices, to amend behavior, redress negligence, and perhaps by such means improve his or her life.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But if he had persevered a little longer, I am sure I would have relented, for I could see that he was wasting away like snow in the rays of the sun, and I was longing to break my resolve.’ ‘Madam,’ said the pilgrim, ‘it is this sin alone which lies at the root of all your suffering. I know for a fact that Tedaldo never coerced you in the slightest. When you fell in love with him, you did so of your own accord because you found him attractive. It was with your full consent that he began to visit you and enjoy your intimate favours, and your delight in him was so obvious from your words and deeds that, though he already loved you before, you intensified his love a thousandfold. And if this was so (as I know it was), what possible reason could prompt you to withdraw yourself so inflexibly from him? You should have thought about all these things beforehand, and if you felt it was wrong, if you felt you were going to have to repent, you should not have had anything to do with him in the first place. The point is this, that when he became yours, so you became his. Inasmuch as he belonged to you, you were perfectly free to discard him whenever you wished. But since, at the same time, you belonged to him, it was quite improper of you, indeed it was robbery on your part, to remove yourself from him against his will. ‘Now, I would have you know that I myself am a friar. I am therefore familiar with all their ways, and it is not unfitting for me, as it would be for a layman, to express myself somewhat freely about them for your benefit. I do this, and I do it willingly, so that you will know them better in the future than you appear to have done in the past. ‘There was once a time 3 when friars were very saintly and worthy men, but those who lay claim nowadays to the title and reputation of friar have nothing of the friar about them except the habits they wear. Even these are not genuine friars’ habits, because whereas the people who invented friars decreed that the habit should be close-fitting, coarse, and shabby, and that, by clothing the body in humble apparel, it should symbolize the mind’s disdain for all the things of this world, your present-day friars prefer ample habits, generously cut and smooth of texture, and made from the finest of fabrics. Indeed, they now have elegant and pontifical habits, in which they strut like peacocks through the churches and the city squares without compunction, just as though they were members of the laity showing off their robes.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  That statement captured her interest. She asked me questions about my father’s abandonment of our family and got me to tell her how he’d absconded in the middle of the night; how my mother, in shame, withdrew from her friends and hid in the house with the blinds closed; how later I’d found a letter to Mother from Lenore, worried about her silence. When I’d asked Mother about her early friendship with Lenore, she would say nothing, though she did reveal that Lenore’s husband died, leaving Lenore money to move to New York and become a successful artist. For years I hid my godmother’s letter as a secret passageway out of my limited life, and during my last year in high school I wrote and reminded her that she was responsible for my spiritual growth, and she’d invited me to come stay with her. “And has Lenore addressed your spiritual growth?” Anaïs asked. “Not really. She isn’t Catholic anymore. She’s a Buddhist now, though she might become a Hindu. Her art is spiritual, don’t you think?” “Yes, I do. Very. Art is my religion now.” “And mine,” I eagerly agreed. Anaïs continued studying me, then gently asked, “How old were you when your father left?” “Eleven.” Her sympathy penetrated me like the heavy August heat, and she said with great sadness, “I was eleven, too, when my father abandoned our family.” Startled, I stared at her lovely face, amazed that she of all people had been abandoned like me. She elaborated. “We had just come home from the hospital. I’d had a burst appendix. I thought Papa was leaving because of all the trouble and the big hospital bill I’d caused.” She felt responsible for her father leaving, as I did, though in my case it had been because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. The summer of my tenth birthday, my mother, father, and I took a vacation, and my parents argued in the car the whole drive. Mother kept opening the passenger door, threatening to jump out, and he yelled at her to go ahead, even pushed her, while I sat invisible and mute in the backseat. When we got to the grand, fairytale Banff Hotel in Canada, I had thought it would enchant them, as it had me. We were going to put on our best clothes and go to dinner in the hotel dining room, but they began shouting earsplitting curses at each other again. I put my hands over my ears and tried to make myself disappear, but this time, some cyclone seized and threw me out of my usual frozen silence, and I heard myself scream, “Stop it! Stop it! Don’t you see what you are doing to me?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  For I once had a neighbour who, without the slightest cause, was forever beating his wife, so that on this one occasion I spoke ill of him to his wife’s kinsfolk, for I felt extremely sorry for that unfortunate woman. Whenever the fellow had had too much to drink, God alone could tell you how he battered her.’ Then the friar said: ‘Let me see now, you tell me you were a merchant. Did you ever deceive anyone, as merchants do?’ ‘Faith, sir, I did,’ said Ser Ciappelletto. ‘But all I know about him is that he was a man who brought me some money that he owed me for a length of cloth I had sold him. I put the money away in a box without counting it, and a whole month passed before I discovered there were four pennies more than there should have been. I kept them for a year with the intention of giving them back, but I never saw him again, so I gave them away to a beggar.’ ‘That was a trivial matter,’ said the friar, ‘and you did well to dispose of the money as you did.’ The holy friar questioned him on many other matters, but always he answered in similar vein, and hence the friar was ready to proceed without further ado to give him absolution. But Ser Ciappelletto said: ‘Sir, I still have one or two sins I have not yet told you about.’ The friar asked him what they were, and he said: ‘I recall that I once failed to show a proper respect for the Holy Sabbath, by making one of my servants sweep the house after nones on a Saturday.’ ‘Oh!’ said the friar. ‘This, my son, is a trifling matter.’ ‘No, father,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘you must not call it trifling, for the Sabbath has to be greatly honoured, seeing that this was the day on which our Lord rose from the dead.’ Then the friar said: ‘Have you done anything else?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Ser Ciappelletto, ‘for I once, without thinking what I was doing, spat in the house of God.’ The friar began to smile, and said: ‘My son, this is not a thing to worry about. We members of religious orders spit there continually.’ ‘That is very wicked of you,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘for nothing should be kept more clean than the holy temple in which sacrifice is offered up to God.’ In brief, he told the friar many things of this sort, and finally he began to sigh, and then to wail loudly, as he was well able to do whenever he pleased. ‘My son,’ said the holy friar.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  They showed me that people want to be fooled, and that it was easy to fool them. All I’d done was imagine myself as Anaïs, and people, needing her to be there, believed in the lie. It left me feeling inflated, pumped with helium, but also cynical. I’d satisfied the dream I’d held for so long of becoming Anaïs, if only for one night, but when it happened, it felt creepy—like being a body snatcher. [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] Only three days later Anaïs, back from the hospital, phoned to find out how the event had gone. I still felt drained, as if my trick of becoming her in the auditorium and the rush of her fans had been a seizure that had left me limp, hollow, my ears ringing. “How did it go?” “Alright. They didn’t boo.” “What else? “I have a bunch of gifts to bring you. How did you get out of the hospital so soon?” “What do you mean?” She sounded affronted. “I mean all the other times you had to stay longer.” “Oh, they just had to fatten me up this time.” “Couldn’t they have waited until after your appearance?” “No, they thought I was that weak.” “Oh. I’m sorry. People really missed seeing you.” She said the purpose of her call was to invite me and Jamie to come tell her about the event, and she wanted both of us to stay after to meditate for her cure with the “white light people.” “What do they charge for that?” I asked skeptically. “Nothing. They want to help. It’s just white light, Tristine.” [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] There was total gridlock on the freeway and I arrived almost two hours late. The house was dark except for lit tea candles everywhere, and the white light people, teenagers in diaphanous robes, were ready to begin. Anaïs’s eyes were shut so I put down the gifts and tried to creep unnoticed to an empty chair next to Jamie. The young men with scraggly beards and girls with long braids made a semi-circle around Anaïs, who sat up straight in a kitchen chair. The meditation, which one of the young men guided us through, was to feel the white light penetrating Anaïs’s body, healing all her cells from the top of her head to her toes. I threw myself into it. With the effort of moving boulders, I concentrated on that white light dissolving her cancer cells. My eyes were closed, but when I heard weeping, I opened them. Anaïs was coiled into herself. “I turned against God.” She struggled to speak between sobs. “Because of my father.” She looked like a trembling, terrified child instead of the woman I knew. The white light kids huddled together in consternation while Rupert rushed to her side and held her as she continued to sob uncontrollably. Jamie and I exchanged an alarmed look.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  TODAY, WHAT JEAN-JACQUES DID WHILE I was intoxicated would likely be considered a form of date rape. But in 1962 there was no such concept. In fact, for me, having come of age in the 1950s, a man taking you while you were helpless was a secret fantasy. One where I could have pleasure without guilt, as when I imagined myself being bound to a factory conveyor belt and carried on it to a man like nougat centers to the chocolate dip—moving toward desire free of volition. I did realize that I should not have let a man into my godmother’s loft. Lenore had told me that she had given up men for the sake of her art, and this loft was her sanctuary. She would not be happy if she knew how Jean-Jacques had defiled it. So when I awoke after my night with Jean-Jacques, grateful not to have a hangover, I gathered up my panties and the bed sheets and carried them to the laundry closet, noticing in wonder little translucent chips flaking off the fabric. I argued to myself that nothing had really happened. Jean-Jacques hadn’t taken my virginity. Although he’d been aroused, he hadn’t tried to enter me, which told me he really respected and cared for me—and that, in my innocence, meant the beginning of love.