Humiliation

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 2 of 38 · 20 per page

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  By overall frames I mean the narrative genre of innocence vindicated, righteousness redeemed, and virtue rewarded. In other words, on all three narrative levels—surface, intermediate, and deep—biblical models and scriptural precedents have controlled the story to the point that without them nothing is left but the brutal fact of crucifixion itself. I need to clarify, however, what I mean by prophecy historicized. I do not intend the apologetical or polemical use of biblical texts as prophecies about Jesus, as if such texts were uniquely and exclusively pointing to Jesus the future Messiah. Prophecy historicized means that Jesus is embedded within a biblical pattern of corporate persecution and communal vindication. Such texts may point particularly or especially to Jesus, but, at least originally, they did not point privately or exclusively to him. The question, in other words, is whether those passion-resurrection details derive from historical recall or biblical model? I gave the evidence for that latter alternative in The Cross That Spoke and Who Killed Jesus? and shall not repeat it here. But, lest all of this get too abstract, I give one example of this process, one instance of prophecy historicized, one case in which a text about mutual passion and mutual vindication is actualized during the crucifixion of Jesus. It was just mentioned as the gall and vinegar drink from Psalm 69:21. RECALLING SCRIPTURE Psalm 69 itself has a dyadic structure of persecution and vindication. The first and longer part in 69:1–29 is a catalogue of sufferings from one whose “eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” Then, in 69:30–36, there is an abrupt shift from pleading to thanksgiving, a sudden change from lament for persecution to gratitude for vindication. These are the transition verses: But I am lowly and in pain; let your salvation, O God, protect me. I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. (Psalm 69:29–30) The verse I am interested in occurs in that former section as the catalogue of woes gives way to a series of curses against the persecutors: They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:21) The sufferer receives poison (gall) and vinegar instead of food and drink. In context it is the climax of derision and oppression suffered at the hand of enemies. That is, of course, a general metaphor for lethal attack, but how can it be applied to Jesus, who is already being crucified? The Cross Gospel in the Gospel of Peter makes it cohere quite literally and successfully with the actual situation of execution. In that gospel, as you recall, it is the Jewish people who crucify Jesus and then repent when they see the miracles that accompany his death. But here is what happens before that moment: Now it was midday and a darkness covered all Judaea. And they became anxious and uneasy lest the sun had already set, since he was still alive.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  He describes a dinner in which the rich host, Virro, invites some poor clients to a meal and then deliberately insults them by giving good bread, food, wine, and service to himself and his friends but bad equivalents to them. We are back again with commensality, but now as calculated insult and intentional humiliation. Juvenal addresses Trebius, one of those hangers-on who sit far from the host and hope to get his scraps instead of their own bad food. You appear To yourself as a free man, a tycoon’s guest; he thinks you — Not bad guesswork—a slave to his kitchen’s odor. For who Could be so destitute as to suffer this patron twice If as a boy he had worn the free man’s golden device, Or even the leather boss, the badge poor folk would wear? The hope to dine well deceives you: “Look, that half-eaten hare He’ll give us now, or from the haunch of boar some bits; We’ll get what’s left of the capon soon.” So all of you sit In silence, ready, with bread held tight, untasted, and wait. It’s a wise man who treats you thus. If you can tolerate All this, you deserve it. Some day you’ll offer, with shaven pate, Your head to be slapped [like a clown] and won’t be afraid of being skinned By keen whips [like a slave], worthy at last of such feasts and such a friend. Unless you had started life as slaves, asks Juvenal, how could you take such abuse? Maybe, he concludes, you will end up as slaves. Despite his seething resentment we catch a glimpse of what lower-class clientage must have felt like in actual practice. But that is in a big city. It is hard even to imagine how the lower classes fared in rural situations within a patronal society. In the crowded city, even the poorest clients were useful to greet the patron as he appeared from his house in the morning or to accompany him on political or social visits during the day. Their presence and number proclaimed his importance. But, as Juvenal noted, clientage could be very, very close to slavery, and at times it could be much worse. Although slave societies and patronal societies have both been justified as moral associations, it is probably better not to mourn their passing from the human scene. James and Peter What is at stake here is the meaning of the itinerancy of Jesus. Why is he always going somewhere rather than being settled in one place and letting crowds come to him? Many people were permanently on the move in that first century for reasons of teaching, business, administration, or military activity. In those cases itinerancy was simply an accidental necessity of one’s mission. But was the itinerancy of Jesus more than that? Was his itinerancy or even vagrancy a programmatic part of his radical message?

• From A History of God (1993)

  Nay but [man] has never yet fulfilled what he has enjoined upon him. Let man, then, consider [the sources of] his food: [how it is] that we pour down waters, pouring it down abundantly; and then we cleave the earth [with new growth] cleaving it asunder, and thereupon we cause grain to grow out of it, and vines and edible plants, and olive trees and date palms, and gardens dense with foliage, and fruits and herbage, for you and for your animals to enjoy. 13 The existence of God is not in question, therefore. In the Koran an “unbeliever” ( kafir bi na’mat al-Lah ) is not an atheist in our sense of the word, somebody who does not believe in God, but one who is ungrateful to him, who can see quite clearly what is owing to God but refuses to honor him in a spirit of perverse ingratitude. The Koran was not teaching the Quraysh anything new. Indeed, it constantly claims to be “a reminder” of things known already, which it throws into more lucid relief. Frequently the Koran introduces a topic with a phrase like: “Have you not seen …?” or “Have you not considered …?” The Word of God was not issuing arbitrary commands from on high but was entering into a dialogue with the Quraysh. It reminds them, for example, that the Kabah, the House of al-Lah, accounted in large measure for their success, which was really in some sense owing to God. The Quraysh loved to make the ritual circumambulations around the shrine, but when they put themselves and their own material success into the center of their lives they had forgotten the meaning of these ancient rites of orientation. They should look at the “signs” ( ayat ) of God’s goodness and power in the natural world. If they failed to reproduce God’s benevolence in their own society, they would be out of touch with the true nature of things. Consequently, Muhammad made his converts bow down in ritual prayer ( salat ) twice a day. This external gesture would help Muslims to cultivate the internal posture and reorient their lives. Eventually Muhammad’s religion would be known as islam , the act of existential surrender that each convert was expected to make to al-Lah: a muslim was a man or woman who has surrendered his or her whole being to the Creator. The Quraysh were horrified when they saw these first Muslims making the salat: they found it unacceptable that a member of the haughty clan of Quraysh with centuries of proud Bedouin independence behind him should be prepared to grovel on the ground like a slave, and the Muslims had to retire to the glens around the city to make their prayer in secret.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It seems to have been a fair system, but the mining income also had to produce enough funds to support the Renaissance palaces looming over the town. It was long after Luther had left home, in the 1520s, that this balance became increasingly difficult to maintain. While the counts continued to squeeze money out of the leaseholders, income from the mines began to decline—the seams were deeper and therefore harder to reach, water had to be pumped out, and they required more machinery. The numbers of smelter-masters shrank and the silver-refining companies ( Saigergesellschaften ) that had been financing the mine operators now began to gain possession of the mines as the smelter-masters became indebted to them. 45 A proud, independent man, by the 1520s Hans Luder himself was unable to pay off his debts and was forced to work for the hated capitalists, in his case the Saigerhandelsgesellschaft at Schwarza, on a salary of fifty guilders a year with, humiliatingly, a supervisor at his side. 46 When he died in 1530 there were no mines for his son in Mansfeld to inherit, only the family property—worth a not insubstantial sum—to be shared equally among the children. 47 While in 1508 there had been forty-two smelter-masters in Mansfeld, by 1536 their number had halved. 48 In the 1560s, by which time the counts were running the Mansfeld mines themselves, the entire mining enterprise went bankrupt. 49 By the end of the century, the seams were exhausted and German silver production had given way to competition from the silver of the New World. Hans Luder and his contemporaries tried to make sense of economic relationships that no one could understand or control, and which were eventually to destroy them. They had no economic theory and little understanding of how wealth was created: No one knew why the capitalists in Nuremberg and Leipzig profited while the mine owners suddenly became impoverished. Economic thought was based on the assumption that wealth was limited. If one person had wealth, another could not get it. Metals, it was believed, resulted from the mixing of quicksilver and brimstone and were shaped by the influences of the planets. Mining was a matter of luck. There were diviners, and there were printed advice books, but no one knew where the rich seams might lie. Small wonder that the figure of Fate should have been so ubiquitous in the Mansfelders’ lives. There was a rich mining folklore that left its mark on Luther. With water essential to the process of smelting, he grew up with the belief in “nixes,” or water sprites, mischievous creatures who played tricks on humans. The fossils found in the mines were said to be drawings made by the spirits of the earth and of the air, and strange uncanny lights were believed to point to the rich seams.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  While he lived under Luther’s roof, Karlstadt was compelled to write a full recantation of his views on the Last Supper, again printed at Wittenberg and once more prefaced by Luther. 36 Luther conceded that Karlstadt’s treatises on the subject had been presented as theses, matters for discussion, not as statements of truth; but like others, Luther said, he had forgotten the form in which they had been issued and taken them to be statements of his real views. Turning Karlstadt’s emphasis on the spirit against him, Luther insisted that it was clear that his views were not “of the spirit,” because the spirit made people certain and bold; Karlstadt and his ilk, on the other hand, spoke only out of craziness and human darkness, and therefore everyone should be warned against his views. This was humiliating enough, but in early September, Karlstadt was writing to Luther as Luther’s “slave,” apologizing for disturbing his “sweet dream” and begging him to get the Elector to permit him to live in Saxony, preferably in Kemberg. He knew, he groveled to “your reverend lordship,” that it lay in Luther’s “might, not to say, power” to have his exile lifted. 37 Luther duly wrote to the Elector but, possibly on Spalatin’s advice, the Elector refused to permit Karlstadt to reside in Kemberg, because it was on the road to Leipzig and thus “suspicious” travelers might pass through and spread his message. He was to live only in “villages and hamlets” within three miles of Wittenberg, securely marooned in the country and away from the town and the university, but still under the authorities’ watchful eye. 38 The wellsprings of Karlstadt’s intellectual life—colleagues and students, a printer and a pulpit—were all denied him. It seems that he was now condemned to work as a farmer. It left Karlstadt a broken man. He kept his word, publishing virtually nothing once he returned to the Wittenberg area. He did manage to move to Kemberg, however, from where he journeyed to meet sympathetic figures like the noblemen Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Crautwald in Silesia. A few years later, he moved to Basle, where he found a more congenial intellectual home, but he did not publish much. His theology continued to develop the idea of Gelassenheit, and when he died in 1541, he was in the process of composing a major synoptic work on theology in which Gelassenheit would have played a central role. It is puzzling that he failed utterly to capitalize on either the Peasants’ War or on the support his ideas were gaining in the cities of southern Germany. The man who wanted to engage in honest toil like a peasant found himself attacked and hunted by peasants who saw him as a learned grosser Hans, just another “big Jack.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  Driven to the last extremity, I could no longer keep back the tears. “Madame,” I burst out, “is this the night-cap which you ordered served to me?” Clapping her hands softly she cried out, “Oh you witty rogue, you are a fountain of repartee, but you never knew before that a catamite was called a k-night-cap, now did you?” Then, fearing my companion would come off better than I, “Madame,” I said, “I leave it to your sense of fairness: is Ascyltos to be the only one in this dining-room who keeps holiday?” “Fair enough,” conceded Quartilla, “let Ascyltos have his k-night-cap too!” On hearing that, the catamite changed mounts, and, having bestridden my comrade, nearly drove him to distraction with his buttocks and his kisses. Giton was standing between us and splitting his sides with laughter when Quartilla noticed him, and actuated by the liveliest curiosity, she asked whose boy he was, and upon my answering that he was my “brother,” “Why has he not kissed me then?” she demanded. Calling him to her, she pressed a kiss upon his mouth, then putting her hand beneath his robe, she took hold of his little member, as yet so undeveloped. “This,” she remarked, “shall serve me very well tomorrow, as a whet to my appetite, but today I’ll take no common fare after choice fish!” CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH. She was still talking when Psyche, who was giggling, came to her side and whispered something in her ear. What it was, I did not catch. “By all means,” ejaculated Quartilla, “a brilliant idea! Why shouldn’t our pretty little Pannychis lose her maidenhead when the opportunity is so favorable?” A little girl, pretty enough, too, was led in at once; she looked to be not over seven years of age, and she was the same one who had before accompanied Quartilla to our room. Amidst universal applause, and in response to the demands of all, they made ready to perform the nuptial rites. I was completely out of countenance, and insisted that such a modest boy as Giton was entirely unfitted for such a wanton part, and moreover, that the child was not of an age at which she could receive that which a woman must take. “Is that so,” Quartilla scoffed, “is she any younger than I was, when I submitted to my first man? Juno, my patroness, curse me if I can remember the time when I ever was a virgin, for I diverted myself with others of my own age, as a child then as the years passed, I played with bigger boys, until at last I reached my present age. I suppose that this explains the origin of the proverb, ‘Who carried the calf may carry the bull,’ as they say.” As I feared that Giton might run greater risk if I were absent, I got up to take part in the ceremony. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This pasquil went out under the name of Duke Georg of Saxony but was actually written by Luther’s long-standing enemy Cochlaeus. He repeated it in his prefatory letter to his biography of 442 25. 26. 27 28. 29. MARTIN LUTHER Luther, which was more widely read and appeared in 1549. The same accusation had also been made by Georg Witzel, and by Petrus Sylvius, Die Letzten zwey beschlisslich und aller krefftigest biichleyn M. Petri Sylvii, so das Lutherisch thun an seiner person... Leipzig 1534, lan Siggins, “Luther's Mother Margarethe’, Harvard Theological Review 71, 1978, 125-50, 132. Siggins, ‘Luther’s Mother’, 133: he referred to it again in 1543 in On the Jews and their Lies; and see WT 3, 3838: in 1538 Luther recalled how Duke Georg called his mother a bath maid and him a wechselbalck, referring to the pamphlet written by Cochlaeus under the name of Duke Georg in 1533. LW Letters, I, 145; WB 1, 239, 14 Jan. 1520, 610:20-3. Topp, Historia, 8: there were of course other versions of this story. Ibid., 6-32; Bergmann, Kommunalbewegung, 11-15; 33-7. Topp, Historia, 10-13; see also Stadtarchiv Eisenach, Bestand Chroniken, 40.1/9.1 Chronik Joh. Michael Koch. Chronik Eisenachs bis 1409 (ed. H. Helmbold), 27-40; Kremer, Beitrdge. WB 1, 157, 24(?), Feb. 1519, 353:29-30; WT 3, 3626: 3653. Topp, Historia, 15. Topp recounts the story of a statue of the Madonna and child in St Paul’s monastery in the town, where, if one prayed before the image, Jesus would turn his back as if rejecting the sinner. But if one promised a donation to the monastery, Jesus would turn his face, and if one offered more money, he would bless the worshipper: Topp, Historia, 1y. LW 44, 172; WS 6, 438:18-22; WB 2, 262, 29 Feb. 1520. The discomfort about begging was long-standing: Luther later reminisced how, back at Mansfeld, with a fellow pupil, he went begging for sausage at carnival as was customary, but when a burgher teased them they scarpered, and the householder had to run after them with the sausages: WT 1, 137: Luther uses this story as a parable of the believer's relationship to God; and he couples it, interestingly, with the story of his terror of the sacra- ment when Staupitz carried it in procession at Eisleben. Brecht, Luther, I, 18. The family gave so many donations to the monastery that it was locally known as the ‘Collegium Schalbense’. See Kremer, Beitrdge, esp. 69 and 89. Scherf, Bau- und Kunstdenkmale, 9. Ratzeberger, Die handschriftliche Geschichte, 43-4: Ratzeberger, not a reli- able source, attributes this to Joannes Trebonius, but it is unclear whether such a man existed, or whether the anecdote refers to the Eisenach humanist Trebelius, not a teacher of Luther’s, or whether this anecdote is about another teacher at the school, Brecht, Luther, I, 19. The story is repeated in Paullini, Historia Isenacensis, 125-6. 30. 3 32s 33- 34.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —EARLY biographies of Luther described his life as a monk as a period of drudgery. Johannes Mathesius, whose biography published in 1566 was one of the first full-length works, wrote of how he was forced to do menial tasks, even cleaning the latrines, and Luther himself remembered that he had to beg and clean the privies when he was already a master of theology.16 These are of course partisan accounts, written to show his sufferings at the hands of the envious and cruel monks, and to account for his later hatred of monasticism. Even so, they may contain some truth. Like all novices, Luther had to undergo a period of transition into the new life and this involved doing domestic labor. This experience must have been a shock for a mine owner’s favored son, sent off to school and university from a home where servants and the mistress of the house would probably have done most of the domestic chores. Only after he had begun to lecture on the Psalms was he relieved of these duties, but the order’s concern with the sin of pride suggests that making a former law student clean the latrines was designed to teach him humility. By the time he had been in the monastery for several years, however, others seem to have provided for his basic needs, while on the orders of his mentor Johann von Staupitz, a fellow monk even acted as secretary.17

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When the two sides met again the next day, on May 23, Luther asked whether each of the visitors “would recant what he taught and spread about against the Lord Christ, Scripture and the teaching and view of the Church,” and whether they would henceforth “constantly and in one spirit teach the true presence of the body of Christ in or with the bread of the Communion of the Lord.” Bucer and Capito were compelled to make this humiliating admission of error, after which Luther and his followers left the room to discuss what to do next. They then demanded that the sacramentarians concede that the unworthy, not just the believers, received the true body and blood of Christ in Communion; that is, the Lutherans wanted them to admit that Christ was really present in the sacrament, not just “present” depending on the faith and worthiness of the believer.25 Luther had gotten the recantation he had longed for. He then heaped a further humiliation on the visitors, asking each of them to repeat his confession individually, including that the sacrament was present to the unworthy. Finally the longed-for agreement had been reached and Bucer and Capito were weeping when the theologians all shook hands. Luther advised them to introduce the new teaching to their congregations gradually, so they would not notice—a rather cynical counsel and a gross underestimation of ordinary people’s investments in theological issues. The next day—Ascension Day—he preached on Mark 16:15: “Go out into all the world and preach the gospel to all creatures.” The chronicler Myconius, who heard the sermon, wrote, “I have heard Luther preach often, but at that time it seemed to me as if it was not just him speaking, but that he thundered out of the heavens themselves in the name of Christ.”26

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —THERE was much to be accomplished at the new University of Wittenberg. The buildings still had to be completed, its courses of study firmly established, staff hired, and students attracted.28 And although it was a new foundation, Wittenberg swiftly invented its own traditions, which Luther would come to cherish. Shortly after it was established, the university found its own publicist, Andreas Meinhardi, whose Latin dialogue in its praise was published in 1508. Though this work did not win him the academic post he craved, it secured him a position as civic secretary to the town council, a post he held until his death. Meinhardi described the rituals through which new students were admitted, and they were probably not unlike initiation rituals elsewhere in Germany. The initiate would be surrounded by a troupe of old hands, his face would be blacked with soot and dirt, his beard (if he had one) would be tugged, pig’s bristles would be wiped across his face, he would be anointed with “what people leave behind hedges,” and he would be “baptized” with wine. The so-called Beanus would have to host a celebratory meal for the professors while bound with chains and ritually humiliated. His hair would be washed with “horse eggs,” horns would be placed on his head and his teeth filed; his learning would be mocked, and he would be teased first about girls and then quizzed about the quality and extent of his anus. It is hard to imagine a more complete humiliation, or a more searing introduction to academic hierarchy, as those who had experienced it would later inflict it on someone else.29 [image "Gm_2332 0001" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_020_r1.jpg] [image "Gm_2332 0001" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_020_r1.jpg] 17. Portrait of Christoph Scheurl by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

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

  “Look at Celena and how quietly she sits,” one of the demonstrators said. “Fuck her! Fuck you!” Donna yelled. Her face filled with blood, seeming as if it might burst as a demonstrator held her head still against her will. Carlene had given up, breaking into sobs. Watery mucus dripped from her nose. The buzz of the clippers rang, and I felt the comb vibrate over my scalp as chunks of hair fell onto our shoulders and laps. It took only a few minutes to have our hair shaved to a quarter of an inch. The demonstrators passed around oval hand mirrors, seemingly oblivious to our distress. This was “act as if” at its finest. “Take a look at how beautiful you are now,” a demonstrator said to me. I couldn’t stomach looking in the mirror. I avoided mirrors whenever I could. I already knew how I looked: a narrow skinny head with big, dark, haunted eyes. In my dresser drawer was a knitted hat I’d tucked away for these occasions. Every moment that I was allowed I would wear that hat until my hair grew back to some semblance of normalcy. For days we girls skulked around, startlingly odd-looking with our newly shaven appearances until time wore away our timidity and awkwardness and we were once again ourselves. A few days after the mandatory haircuts, a group of us girls were rounded up again. “Come, come!” two of the demonstrators beckoned. The summons was for a special tea party at the Big House. A large, white, plantation-style home on the property where Chuck and Betty had once lived was now a museum of sorts. I was given a shiny, poufy dress the color of pale pink frosting, which clashed with my dark skin and reddish undertones. The fabric, stiff and unyielding, caged my boyish muscular body and long neck. I was freakishly eye-catching wearing this princess attire while sporting my newly shaven look.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Weak and debilitated from his time in prison, Kaiser on July 17 was forced to participate in a disputation with none other than Johannes Eck, Luther’s antagonist at Leipzig, who had even gone to Rome to procure the bull against him. It is unclear whether Luther knew before his collapse that Eck had taken an interest in Kaiser’s case. Luther had been the butt of Eck’s coarse humor at Leipzig, and now Eck mocked Kaiser to his face as a man “whose wares are even worse than his salesmanship.” 43 Unable to burn Luther, Eck meant to burn Kaiser. Protected by the Elector Friedrich and his successor Johann, Luther was safe. In fact it was now he who was on the side of the authorities, as he had wryly noted after his encounter with Karlstadt in the Black Bear Inn: “I who ought to have become a martyr have reached the point where I am now making martyrs of others.” 44 Karlstadt was very much on his mind, too, and shortly before the breakdown, Luther had become convinced that he would never win him back to the fold. At the climax of his collapse he worried that his death or the Devil’s attacks would prevent him writing against the sacramentarians, and he felt the weight and isolation of leading the movement: “Oh what dreadful misery the Schwärmer [enthusiasts] will cause after my death!” 45 The events of Kaiser’s martyrdom followed closely upon Luther’s breakdown. On July 18 he was taken to Passau and again given an opportunity to recant. When he refused, he was ritually defrocked in a ceremony carried out in front of a large crowd, which included Eck. Piece by piece, his priest’s robes were stripped from his body by the bishop of Passau, and he was shaved. Then he was dressed in nothing but a smock, or Kittel, a black slashed beret was put on his head, and, now an ordinary layman, he was handed over to the city judge. This ritual was not the end of his humiliation, however. Kaiser was kept in the castle dungeon for yet another month, and then paraded in chains around the town, before being taken to his home town of Schärding, where he was executed on August 16. Kaiser died true to his Lutheran faith.

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

  Doesn’t your shit look like that?” Obediently, I glanced down at the puffy, water-logged poop that was starting to fray, stringy pieces pulling away and sinking. “No,” I whispered. Mary Sue shoved me back toward where I’d been seated. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” she said. The long shadows of afternoon passed over us. The light grew dim. Afternoon turned to evening. The demonstrators became tired. They excused us, announcing that tomorrow we would return to back-to-basics mode. Our walk to breakfast the next morning became a mandatory silent march. The lack of chatter with just the sounds of our shoes crunching gravel opened my ears to a stillness I’d never noticed before. Hearing a bird call now and then and a whisper of wind rifling through the leaves on the nearby trees, I think I would have enjoyed the silence had it not been a punishment. Instead, I felt stilted and unnatural, not sure how careful I should be in keeping noise out of my movements. All our free time was confiscated in service of back-to-basics. We were told we’d been lazy. Not flushing the toilet had been the last straw. As we marched in the sharp cold of morning, our two long rows were intersected by another group of marchers. The Punk Squad consisted of teens who had been in trouble with the law or sent to Synanon by families who felt they’d lost control of their children. Punks typically had a rabid aversion to Synanon and were notorious for acting out. They were monitored closely, had little freedom and lived a near-constant military lifestyle. Punks wore overalls like we did, but instead of tennis shoes, their feet were clad in sturdy military boots. The Punks marched uniformly through the mists in two parallel lines, breaking the quiet with their military singing, heads erect, eyes forward, arms swinging in unison. Their booted feet struck the ground all at once, defiant to our own silent progression. Together, they sang, “There was a girl who wore a yellow ribbon. She wore it for her sweetheart who lived in Tomales Bay.” “Tomales Bay!” the girl’s voices rang out. The boys’ baritone voices echoed, “Tomales Bay!” “She wore it for her sweetheart who lived in Tomales Bay!” They marched strong and shouted robustly, gazing neither right nor left as if they were a single entity. We children watched until they disappeared down the road, and we continued our own scraggly march. “No talking,” we were reminded as we went into the Commons. First came the milk. I’d learned to drink it big gulps with several seconds’ rest and normal breathing between gulps. Pleased to see pancakes with little tabs of butter instead of eggs, I prepared to tuck into the warm cakes set in front of me. Pancakes had always been my favorite breakfast food and I hadn’t had any since I’d come to Synanon.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  A lumbering drinking pal of Mother’s from the technical university where she’d gotten her teaching degree, he sported a meager russet beard with a skunk stripe and a French accent I later learned was fake. He’d first materialized on our sofa one morning, shoeless, his coat draped across him. The conventioneer’s name tag pasted to the breast pocket—apparently printed by the wife I never met—read, DON’T BRING HIM HOME HE’S GOT THE CAR !!! I liked the sentences he could spin out in midair, with commas and clauses and subclauses woven through. I liked how he oohed at the poetry I’d been encouraged to press on him since about age eleven. It was tricky to find the right moment—after I’d faked interest in Ming porcelain but before he got too lubricated to talk right. Having not seen him since I was in grade school, I felt pushy showing up in his office brandishing recommendation forms. But he’d said on the phone I could come, so I leaned in his open door slot to ask was he busy . He sat behind a desk sprawled with papers, hands interleaved before him as if by a mortician. He closed the door behind me, then steered me to a chair facing his desk. I figured he’d decided against recommending me, having found the poems and essays I’d sent him in advance dim-witted. I felt oafish before him. No sooner did he sit down than he bobbed back to his feet like he’d forgotten something. He walked to my side and—with a kind of slow ceremony I did nothing to stop—lifted my T-shirt till I was staring down at my own braless chest. With his trembling and sweaty hand, he cupped first one breast, then the other, saying, By God, they’re real! Such was the interview that landed me in a school far beyond my meager qualifications. For years I stayed grateful that the whole deal had been fast—a small price to pay for getting out of Leechfield. Though it was smaller than more violent assaults that had happened as a kid, which I paid for longer, it touched the same sore place—did I draw these guys somehow? But for ten years or more, when I was spent or hurt and totting up unnecessary gloom, his bearded face would float to mind, and I’d conjure a deep fry pot big enough to lower the pasty bastard into. Later, I pitied him more, for he was no doubt writhing in his own private hell. Which point is moot, since by now the worms have eaten him, and slowly. What’s a typical journey to college? I couldn’t tell you. I hope my son, Dev, had one last summer. His dad was staring owlishly into the computer screen, trying to download music, while I slipped folded shirts into fiberboard drawers and ran extension cords. Before I left, Dev heard a series of moist-eyed platitudes till he said, Mom, don’t Polonius me with this nagging.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I have seen many alliances like the one between Larry and his father. Typically these coalitions are formed during or after the breakup with the goal of punishing one of the parents. In these situations, the child is usually a preadolescent or young adolescent and the targeted parent is the one who sought the divorce. The ally parent, like Larry’s father, has presumably been hurt and humiliated by rejection. The child, like Larry, feels himself to be the family guardian—a gallant Horatio standing at the bridge who seeks to restore the family or help the sorrowful parent . At the breakup, one-fifth of the children in this study formed such alliances on behalf of one parent against the other. 5 They were very talented nabobs of negativism, often provocative and very rude. It was as if they had been granted a hunting license by the powerful authority of one parent (the ally who was teaching them to be good) to destroy the wicked parent in their sights. Pull your skirt down, you’re a whore, God will punish you, and so on. The mischief wrought by presumably well-bred children was astonishing. These bizarre alliances crop up like mushrooms over the postseparation landscape. They are powerful because they assuage the loneliness and hurt felt by one child and one parent. By becoming each other’s trusted companions-in-arms, they support one other. To their credit, children tended to make such alliances with the parent who seemed to be suffering most and needed help. Those children who participated were likely to be more insecure than the siblings who refused to get involved. Often the best candidate was a child like Larry who prior to the divorce was a loner with few friends and outside interests. Such youngsters find the parent’s attention dazzling. In following these alliances over the years, I find that the vast majority are short-lived and can even boomerang. Children are capricious allies. They soon become bored or ashamed of their mischief. Not one alliance lasted through adolescence and most crumbled within a year or two. Larry’s alliance with his father lasted somewhat longer because his mother was easily cowed by his father and it took her several years to find the strength to control her son. Until she called the police, she had not been able to punish or restrain his bad behavior. In any case, most children find their way back to age-appropriate activities as they enter adolescence, and this, as the co-optive parent finds, turns the tables. With time they are likely to turn against the parent who encouraged them to misbehave. As one sixteen-year-old girl, who had attacked her father five years earlier for all kinds of sinful behavior, told me, “I don’t want to make my mom sound rotten but she was very persuasive. We were terrible to my dad. I’m still surprised that he was willing to forgive us after all that we said and did to him.

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

  τἄπεινόω, to lower, in point of height :—Pass., πᾶν ὄρος ταπεινωθή- σεται Ἐν. Lue, 3-53 πρόσωπον éx μετεώρου ταπεινούμενον Hipp. Coac. 152; of rivers, Diod. 1. 36. II. metaph. ἕο lessen, τὸν φθόνον Plut. Pericl. 32: 20 disparage, Polyb. 6. 15, 7, cf. 3.85, 7:—Pass. to be lowered or lessened, Plat. Tim. 72 D. 2. to humble, abase, Xen. An. 6. 3> 18; τ. καὶ συστέλλων Plat. Lys. 210 E; ταπεινώ- σαντες... τοὺς νῦν ἐπηρμένους Aeschin. 87. 24 :—Pass., ταπεινωθεὶς" ἔπε- ται Plat. Phaedr. 254 E; ὑπὸ πενίας Id. Rep. 553 C; τεταπείνωται ἡ τῶν ᾿Αθηναίων δόξα Xen. Mem. 3. 5, 43 ἐταπεινοῦντο ταῖς ἐλπίσι Diod. P32) IE: 3. in moral sense, to. make lowly, to humble, ἑαυτόν Ev. Matth. 23. 12, al.:—Pass. to humble oneself, τὴν θεὸν ἐξιλάσαντο TO τε- ταπεινῶσθαι σφόδρα Menand. Δεισ. 4; so in N. T. τἄπείνωμα, τό, that which is made low:—in astronomy the declination of a star, opp. to ὕψωμα, Plut. 2. 149 A, Sext. Emp. M. 5. 35. II. humility, Eust. Opusc. 265. 78. Timetvncis, 7, a lowering, eS humiliation, abasement, Polyb. 9. 33, 10; δουλεία καὶ τ. Diod. 453; τ. ποιεῖν τινος Id. 11.87: abase- ment, defeat, Plat. Legg. 815 A, Phat. 2. a lessening, disparage- ment, Arist. P, A. 4. 10, 49. 8. low estate, low condition, Lxx (Gen. 29. 32), Ev. Luc. 1. 48, al. 4. lowness of style, Plut. 2.7 A, Quintil. Inst. 8. 3, 48. τάπηκ [a], ητος, 6, a carpet, rug, Lat. tapes, τάπητα φέρεν μαλακοῦ ἐρίοιο Od. 4.1243; χλαινάων .. οὔλων Te ταπήτων 1]. 16. 2243; used to spread on seats and beds (v. sub δέμνιον), εἷσεν δ᾽ ἐν κλισμοῖσι τἀπησί τε πορφυρέοισιν 9. 200, cf. το. 156., 24. 645, Od. 4. 298., το. 12, etc. ; φορμὸν ἔχειν ἀντὶ τάπητος Ar. Pl. 542.—Later Att. forms are ταπίς, dams, qq. ν. τἄπητιον, 76, Dim. of foreg., Alciphro Fr. 18. watt, Att. crasis for τὰ ἐπί :---τἀπιεικῇ, for τὰ ἐπιεικῆ. τάπις [a], os, 7,=d5ams (which seems to be the older Ait. form), Xen. Cyr. 8. 8, 16, An. 7. 3 8 and 27, Plut., etc. τἀπό, Att. crasis for τὰ ἀπό :--τἀπόρρητα, for τὰ ἀπόρρητα. ταπρῶτα, Adv. for τὰ πρῶτα, at first, 1]. τ. 6. τάρ, acc. to some old Gramm. an enclit. Conjunction, εἴ Tap, ov Tap, where are now written εἴτ᾽ dpa, οὔτ᾽ ἄρα, as in 1]. 1. 65, 93; v. Cobet. Misc. Crit. p. 315.

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

  “Are you lucky to be here?” “Yes.” “Why are you lucky to be Synanon kids?” Silence. “Look how many brothers and sisters you have. Look how many parents you have. On the outside, kids have to live with their biological parents in the nuclear family, but we know here in Synanon that this isn’t good for children. The parents in these families smother their children with their clingy affections. Here you have freedom, you have space, you can breathe. Synanon children are smarter and healthier than children on the outside. “Do you know what this is?” She spread her arms wide. “It’s an experiment, a working experiment. That’s what I mean when I say you are the models for the future. One day everyone will want to come to Synanon. All of you were lucky enough to be the first.” During my time in the school, I came to see other children’s parents as a kind of curiosity, their relationships a concept rather than a reality. Some parents visited now and then, most did not. Some worked as demonstrators, although after a while, it was easy to forget that a demonstrator had a child in the school because the parents did not seem to have any special bond with their offspring. I knew which adults were the parents of which kids, and in most cases there was a strong physical resemblance, but that was where the relationship ended. Adults led completely separate lives from us. One of our many father figures in the school was Don Leitner, who showed up at some point as a demonstrator. Short and stumpy-looking with limbs not quite proportioned with his torso, Don had thin lips that disappeared when he smirked, which was often, and small round eyes set unattractively close together. I hated him. It seemed that whenever Don and I were in the same room, his sole purpose was to publicly humiliate me. My only relief from his malice was Sophie, whom he loved to torture equally. By the time Don started working in the school, I’d grown tired of seminars and lectures that often made no sense. Forced to sit through so many games and talks, I created a detailed fantasy world, to which I’d retreat whenever the need arose. Don immediately spotted that I was not paying attention. The first time he demanded that I recite back to him everything he had said during one of his meetings, I remained silent and miserable, embarrassed that I could remember nothing. “You can’t tell me anything? Why is that?” He waited. I said nothing. “I think you can’t tell me because you’re an idiot. Are you retarded, Celena? Are you a retard?” I felt my body grow hot while he laughed out of the side of his thin lips, the rest of the kids joining in. “I don’t like retards, Celena. Next time you better pay attention.” But I couldn’t. Every time Don spoke, my mind closed.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  It was borderline gangrene. I spent a month flat on my stomach; I couldn't walk or sit; I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing Bobby Jorgenson's scared-white face. Those buggy eyes and the way his lips twitched and that silly excuse he had for a mustache. After the rot cleared up, once I could think straight, I devoted a lot of time to figuring ways to get back at him. 2K OK ok Getting shot should be an experience from which you can draw some small pride. I don't mean the macho stuff. All I mean is that you should be able to talk about it: the stiff thump of the bullet, like a fist, the way it knocks the air out of you and makes you cough, how the sound of the gunshot arrives about ten years later, and the dizzy feeling, the smell of yourself, the things you think about and say and do right afterward, the way your eyes focus on a tiny white pebble or a blade of grass and how you start thinking, Oh man, that's the last thing I'll ever see, that pebble, that blade of grass, which makes you want to cry. Pride isn't the right word. I don't know the right word. All I know is, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. Humiliation shouldn't be part of it. Diaper rash, the nurses called it. An in-joke, I suppose. But it made me hate Bobby Jorgenson the way some guys hated the VC, gut hate, the kind of hate that stays with you even in your dreams. I guess the higher-ups decided I'd been shot enough. At the end of December, when I was released from the 91st Evac Hospital, they transferred me over to Headquarters Company—S-4, the battalion supply section. Compared with the boonies it was cushy duty. We had regular hours. There was an EM club with beer and movies, sometimes even live floor shows, the whole blurry slow motion of the rear. For the first time in months I felt reasonably safe. The battalion firebase was built into a hill just off Highway |, surrounded on all sides by flat paddy land, and between us and the paddies there were reinforced bunkers and observation towers and trip flares and rolls of razor-tipped barbed wire. You could still die, of course—once a month we'd get hit with mortar fire—but you could also die in the bleachers at Met Stadium in Minneapolis, bases loaded, Harmon Killebrew coming to the plate.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  A copper anklet sloped beneath the knob of her ankle, crossed low on her calloused heel. (Uneven hem brushes smudged knees.) A print sash bound her belly. “Where is your brother?” “In the wheelhouse, asleep.” “Where were you?” “On deck. I was sitting in the sun.” “With the men on the docks all coming by to stare? How many with their hands in their pockets?” “Oh . . . !” “None of them with what I got.” He leaned back. His fingers tracked his stomach. “Come here. Tell me what’s for supper.” “Your thoughts have gone as high as your gut, now?” “How do you and the boy get chores done if you sleep and sun all the time?” “But what is there to do in port?” She stepped across the rug, laughing. He grabbed her wrist. She stumbled and he caught: “How many times!” She pushed his chest. Her wrist turned under slippery fingers. “Five times? Six? I’ll say seven—” “But see, you’ve already—” “Once already. Six more now.” He kneaded her inner thigh. “ Cap tain . . . !” She tried to pull away. His hand went beneath the hem. She shrieked and bit the sound off. What spilled after was a giggle. “How many years have I had you two, now?” His forearm shifted like bunched blacksnakes. She tried to push his hand from under her skirt. Stopped trying. She opened her lips and caressed his arm. “How many years? Seven. Now, once for each year you’ve worked on my boat.” He looked down at himself. She touched where he looked: she took it, slipping the loose skin from the head. When she fingered beneath the twice full bag, he arched his back. “Pig. Sit on it. Little white pig . . .” Three calloused fingers were knuckle deep in her. She bent; her hair swept his face. He caught it in his yellow teeth, twisted his head. Kirsten grabbed at her hair, and made an ugly sound. His teeth opened on laughter; it and her hair spilled black lips mottled with cerise. Barking. Claws at wood. Black paws and long muzzle lapped the bunk. The captain kicked the dog with his bare foot (the big chain around his ankle jangles). “Down, Niger! Down, you stupid dog!” Down; then back, nuzzling between them: dog’s tongue. One color: Kirsten’s nipple, the dog’s tongue, the captain’s palm. Niger lapped her crotch for salt. “Down, Niger!” The dog barked. Then the captain looked up: frowned. One shutter had swung open. A woman’s face pressed the glass (dock-side of the boat), tongue caught at the corner of her mouth. Her fingers tipped the sill. Sunlight behind her exploded in loose hair, dimmed her features. Niger barked at her once more. Her eyes shifted; she saw the captain.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN Part Two THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 1 FLORENCE’S PRAYER Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings! F LORENCE raised her voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing: ‘ It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh, Lord, Standing in the need of prayer. ’ Gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last be humbled. She did not look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a moment, the congregation and the piano joined her: ‘ Not my father, not my mother, But it’s me, ob, Lord. ’ She knew that Gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only that some private anguish had brought her low: her song revealed that she was suffering, and this her brother was glad to see. This had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever changed it; nothing ever would. For a moment her pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to this place to-night faltered, and she felt that if Gabriel was the Lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure Hell for all eternity than how before His altar. But she strangled her pride, rising to stand with them in the holy space before the altar, and still singing: ‘ Standing in the need of prayer. ’ Kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in this company before the altar, she gained again from the song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained a new meaning for herself. As a child, the song had made her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite mists alone, waiting for the form of the Son of God to lead her through that white fire. This woman now returned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not knowing where to put her foot; she waited, trembling, for the mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That long road, her life, which she had followed for sixty groaning years, had led her at last to her mother’s starting-place, the altar of the Lord. For her feet stood on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, had crossed over. And would the Lord now reach out His hand to Florence and heal and save? But, going down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden cross, it came to her that she had forgotten how to pray.