Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Vox (1992)

  So he gnarled around the cold-water tap and he gnarled around the hot-water tap and he circled fiercely around the clitty thing that controls the drain, and then when the whole rest of the tub was absolutely gleaming , he went to the drain itself—he set aside the filter thing, and he reached two fingers way in, and he pulled out this revolting slime locket and splapped it against the side of the tub, and then he really went to work on that drain, around and around the rim of chrome, and deeper, right down to those dark crossbars, that I’d never gotten to, he worked the scrubber sponge in there, grrr , more Ajax, more circling, more hot water. I mean I was in a transport!”

• From Vox (1992)

  I’m afraid that by now I was curling my upper lip with pleasure. My expression in fact was exactly the one I would have had if I had been biting open a condom packet with my teeth, that gnashy look, but the thing was— there was no condom packet . My painter loaded up his roller with wall paint, this was a warm neutral gray, and I mean warm, and he came over and he lay down on the floor underneath me, in the opposite direction, with his head touching the baseboard, so I could see his face and his paint-spattered glasses between my breasts, and he touched the roller to one of my nipples, and then rolled up between my breasts and down and over the other nipple, and as he was doing that he used his foot to pull another paint can into position, and then, still lying on his back, he lifted his hips up in the air with both boots resting on the can of paint sort of like a circus elephant on one of those little stools, you know? And he brought out his cock. The hall ass painter took this moment to remove his hands from my back, so that all his weight was directed through his thigh muscles and his cock into my ass, while at the same time the leg painter, who was standing, pulled almost all the way out of me and then he slid himself all the way back in so that I could feel the muscles of his legs hit against me, and I opened my mouth to say, ‘Hooh!’ which is I think almost certainly what I would say if all that was going on in my front hall, but of course as soon as I opened my mouth the cock of the man underneath me slid right inside, so all I could do was hum, and then all three of them came in me, one right after another, first the one in my mouth, surprisingly enough, then the one in my pussy, then finally the one in my ass.” “My gracious, ” he said. “And that’s what you came to in the shower?” “One of the things. I mean—it takes a while to describe it, but it was just a quick succession of images, among many. It takes me a good long time to come.” “Tell me others.” “Well, hm. The idea I actually finally came to was—it was really two ideas.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘A riot, Nounoune! A riot’s broken out among the ladies. MarieLaure and Ma’me Peloux are scratching each other’s eyes out over the marriage settlement1 ’ ‘No!’ ‘Yes! It was a superb sight. (Look out for the olives. ... I’m going to impersonate Ma’me Peloux as a windmill. ...) “Separate bank accounts! Separate bank accounts! Why not a trustee? It’s a personal insult, a personal insult. You forget that my son has his own fortune! ... May I inform you, Madame ‘She called her Madame?’ ‘She most certainly did. “Let me tell you, Madame, that my son has never had a ha’porth of debts since he came of age and the list of his investments bought since 1910 is worth ...” is worth this, that, and the other, including the skin off my nose, plus the fat off my bottom. In short, Catherine de Medici in person! But even more artful, of course!’ Lea’s biue eyes glistened with tears of merriment. ‘Oh, Cheri! you’ve never been funnier in your life! What about the other? The fair Marie-Laure?* ‘Her? Oh! terrible, Nounoune. That woman must have at least a dozen corpses in her wake. Dolled up in jade green, red hair, painted to look eighteen, and the inevitable smile. The trumpetings of my revered Mamma failed to make her bat an eyelid. She held her fire till the assault was over, then she came out with: “It might perhaps be wiser, dear Madame, not to talk too loudly about all the money your son put by in 1910 and the years following. ‘Bang! Straight between the eyes! ... Between yours. Where were you while all this was going on? * * Me? In the large armchair.’ ‘You were actually in the room?’ She stopped laughing, and eating. ‘You were there? What did you do?’ * Cracked a joke, of course. Ma’me Peloux had just seized hold of a valuable piece of bric-^-brac, to avenge my honour, when I stopped her without even getting up. “My adored mother, calm yourself. Follow my example, follow that of my charming mother-in-law, who’s being as sweet as honey ... as sweet as sugar.” And that’s how I managed to arrange that the settlement should apply only to property acquired after marriage.’ ‘I simply don’t understand.’ ‘ The famous sugar plantations that the poor little Prince Ceste left to Marie-Laure by his will. ...’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Forged will! Fury of the Ceste family! Lawsuit pending! Now d’you get it? ’ He crowed. *1 get it. But how did you get hold of the story?’ ‘Ah! I’ll tell you! Old Lili has just pounced with her full weight upon the younger of the Ceste boys, who’s only seventeen and religious. ...’ ‘Old Lili? What a nightmare!* ‘And he babbles family secrets in her ear between every kiss. ...’ ‘ Cheri! I feel sick! ’

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I grumbled, but I still accepted the idea that Ginou was a kind of lofty mountain peak that I had to conquer. Never, in all my life, have I been as humble, with a humility that lacked all bitterness. The unbelievable luck of being Ginou’s official boy friend cost me untold sacrifices. I had to explain to my mother how to starch a shirt collar, though she was never able to learn the trick. I tried to learn how to be more gallant, but I was never spontaneous enough to be the first boy to think of what should be said or done. The other boys always quickly showed me what I might have done only after considerable forethought. If a flower-vendor passed us in the street, all the girls would be wearing, in a twinkling, corsages or necklaces of blue jasmine, and they were always served ice cream or peanuts or cookies before I had even delved into my pocket for the necessary cash. Of course, it wasn’t easy for me to pay; instead of making one seem more noble, poverty actually makes one petty. In many respects, I was a rather stingy beau: I asked nobody for anything, but I also hated to give. My pocket money had cost me too much hard work and I always had too many better uses for it. So our outings always left me some bitterness, more disappointed by myself than by Ginou and the others. As soon as we were together in a crowd, Ginou no longer paid any attention to me but returned at once to her flirtatious manner, her teasing and her constant references to the details of middle-class life that transformed her, in my eyes, into a stranger. I would then feel alienated from her and her friends and often began to wonder how it could be possible for me to court a girl who had so little in common with me and so much in common with the others. Still, we happened to be alone, on this specific occasion, by the breakwater, playing ball together. I was quite obviously her favorite companion. It was five in the afternoon and we had been on the seashore in the sunshine since morning. Between two swims, we had lunched off sandwiches on the beach. Now the violet-colored hills seemed peaceful on the other side of the bay; the seagulls hovered dreamily, almost motionless, in the air, and we were all drowsy, weary of so much light and heat, our skins caked with salt from the sea. The water was warm, lazy; it cast up on the sand short and foamy waves which blended the pale pink of the setting sun, the yellowish green of the sea water itself, and the pale blue-violet of the sky. Suddenly, I was seized with so unbelievable a happiness and could feel so fully the richness of the whole universe that I almost wanted to weep.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Later, a small, dark room, so shabby, like a deep-set alcove. Immediately, the richness of Henry’s voice and mouth. The feeling of sinking into warm blood. And he, overcome with my warmth and moisture. Slow penetration, with pauses and with twists, making me gasp with pleasure. I have no words for it; it is all new to me. The first time Henry made love to me, I realized a terrible fact—that Hugo was sexually too large for me, so that my pleasure has not been unmixed, always somewhat painful. Has that been the secret of my dissatisfaction? I tremble as I write it. I don’t want to dwell on it, on its effect on my life, on my hunger. My hunger is not abnormal. With Henry I am content. We come to a climax, we talk, we eat and drink, and before I leave he floods me again. I have never known such plenitude. It is no longer Henry; and I am just woman. I lose the sense of separate beings. I come back to Hugo appeased and so joyous; it is communicated to him. And he says: “I have never been so happy with you.” It is as if I had ceased devouring him, demanding from him. It is no wonder I am humble before my giant, Henry. And he is humble before me. “You see, Anaïs, I have never before loved a woman with a mind. All the other women were inferior to me. I consider you my equal.” And he, too, seems to be full of a great joy, a joy he has not known with June. That last afternoon in Henry’s hotel room was for me like a white-hot furnace. Before, I had only white heat of the mind and of the imagination; now it is of the blood. Sacred completeness. I come out dazed in the mellow spring evening and I think, now I would not mind dying. Henry has aroused my real instincts, so that I am no longer ill-at-ease, famished, incongruous in my world. I have found where I fit. I love him, and yet I am not blind to the elements in us which clash and out of which, later, will spring our divorce. I can only feel the now. The now is so rich and so tremendous. As Henry says, “Everything is good, good.” It is ten-thirty. Hugo has gone to a banquet, and I am waiting for him. He reassures himself by appealing to my mind. He thinks my mind is always in control. He does not know what madness I am capable of. I am going to keep this story for when he is older, when he, too, has freed his instincts. Telling the truth about myself now would only kill him. His development is naturally slower. At forty he will know what I know today. He will sense and absorb things without pain meanwhile.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  on the next morning. Our whole life is spoiled by his work in the bank. I must get him out of it. And that makes me work on my novel, rewriting, which I hate, for a new book is boiling in my head—June’s book. The conflict between my being “possessed” and my devotion to Hugo is becoming unbearable. I will love him with all my strength but in my own way. Is it impossible for me to grow in only one direction? Tonight I am full of joy because Henry is here again. The impression is always the same: one is filled with the weight and lashing of his writing, and then he comes upon you so softly—soft voice, trailing off, soft gestures, soft, fine white hands—and one surrenders to his indefatigable curiosity and his romanticism towards women. Henry’s description of the Henry Street joint (where June brought Jean to live with them): Bed unmade all day; climbing into it with shoes on frequently; sheets a mess. Using soiled shirts for towels. Laundry seldom gotten out. Sinks stopped up from too much garbage. Washing dishes in bathtub, which was greasy and black-rimmed. Bathroom always cold as an icebox. Breaking up furniture to throw into fire. Shades always down, windows never washed, atmosphere sepulchral. Floor constantly strewn with plaster of Paris, tools, paints, books, cigarette butts, garbage, soiled dishes, pots. Jean running around all day in overalls. June, always half naked and complaining of the cold. What is all that to me? A side of June I will never know. And the other side, which belongs to me, is full of magic and dazzling with beauty and fineness. These details only show me the two-sideness of all things, my own two-sideness, now craving abject living, animality. To Henry: “You say, ‘Gide has mind, Dostoevsky has the other thing, and it is what Dostoevsky has that really matters.’ For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest joy, is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds, and you and I both lose it in the same way, through love. We have lost our minds to June. . . . “Tell me something. You have a feeling for the macabre. Your imagination is attracted by certain grim images. Did you tell Bertha that living with June was like carrying a corpse about? Do you really mind June’s neuroses and illness, or are you merely cursing at what enslaves you?” I have an acute struggle to keep Henry, whom I don’t want to give up, and to keep the relationship between June and me a precious secret.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  One night, when out on a tramp, his eyes wide open in the darkness, Ch6ri had felt compelled to walk up the Avenue Bugeaud; for during the day he had disregarded the superstition that made him return there once every twenty-four hours. There are maniacs who cannot go to sleep without having first touched the door-knob three times; a similar obsession made him run his hand along the railings, then put his finger to the bell-push, and call out Hullo! under his breath, as if in fun, before making off in haste. But one night, that very night, as he stood before the railings, his heart jumped almost into his mouth: there, in the court, the electric globe shone like a mauve moon above the front-door steps, the back door stood wide open shedding a glow on the paved courtyard, while, on the first floor, the bedroom lights filtered through the shutters to make a golden comb. Cheri supported himself against the nearest tree and lowered his head. Tt can’t be true. As soon as I look up, it will all be dark again.’ He straightened up at the sound of a voice. Ernest, the concierge, was shouting in the passage: ‘At nine to-morrow, Marcel will help me carry up the big black trunk, Madame.’ Cheri turned round in a flash and ran as far as the Avenue du Bois. There he sat down. In front of his eyes danced the image of the electric globe he had been staring at — a dark purple ball fringed with gold, against a black group of trees in bud. He pressed his hand to his heart, and took a deep breath. Early lilac blossom scented the night air. He threw his hat away, undid the buttons of his overcoat and, leaning back on a seat, let himself go, his legs outstretched and his hands hanging feebly by his sides. A crushing yet delicious weight had just fallen upon him. ‘Ah! * he whispered, ‘ so this is what they call happiness. I never knew.* For a moment he gave way to self-pity and self-contempt. How many good things had he missed by leading such a pointless life — a young man with lots of money and little heart! Then he stopped thinking for a moment, or possibly for an hour. Next, he persuaded himself there was nothing in the world he wanted, not even to go and see Lea. When he found himself shivering in the cold, and heard the blackbirds carolling the dawn, he got up and, stumbling a little but lighthearted, set off towards the Hotel Morris without passing through the Avenue Bugeaud. He stretched himself, filled his lungs with the morning air, and overflowed with goodwill to all. ‘Now,’ he sighed, the devil driven out of him, ‘now ... Oh now you’ll see just how nice to the girl I shall be.’

• From Henry and June (1986)

  “I have taken a studio in Paris, a small, shaky place, and attempt to run away only for a few hours a day, at least. But what is this other life I want to lead without you? I have to imagine that you are there, June, sometimes. I have a feeling that I want to be you. I have never wanted to be anyone but myself before. Now I want to melt into you, to be so terribly close to you that my own self disappears. I am happiest in my black velvet dress because it is old and is torn at the elbows. “When I look at your face, I want to let go and share your madness, which I carry inside of me like a secret and cannot conceal any more. I am full of an acute, awesome joy. It is the joy one feels when one has accepted death and disintegration, a joy more terrible and more profound than the joy of living, of creating.” March Yesterday at the Café de la Rotonde Henry told me he had written me a letter which he had torn up. Because it was a crazy letter. A love letter. I received this silently, without surprise. I had sensed it. There is so much warmth between us. But I am unmoved. Deep down. I am afraid of this man, as if in him I had to face all the realities which terrify me. His sensual being affects me. His ferocity, enveloped in tenderness, his sudden seriousness, the heavy, rich mind. I am a bit hypnotized. I observe his fine soft white hands, his head, which looks too heavy for his body, the forehead about to burst, a shaking head, harboring so much that I love and hate, that I want and fear. My love of June paralyzes me. I feel warmth towards this man, who can be two separate beings. He wants to take my hand and I appear not to notice. I make a swift gesture of flight. I want his love to die. What I have been dreaming of, just such a man’s desire of me, now I reject. The moment has come to sink in sensuality, without love or drama, and I cannot do it. He misunderstands so much: my smile when he talks about June at first fighting off all his ideas violently and later absorbing them and expressing them as if they were her own. “It happens to all of us,” he says, looking at me aggressively, as if my smile had been one of disdain. I believe he wants to fight. After the violence, the bitterness, the brutality, the ruthlessness he has known, my state of mellowness annoys him. He finds that, like a chameleon, I change color in the café, and perhaps lose the color I have in my own home. I do not fit into his life.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Writing is not, for us, an art, but breathing. After our first encounter I breathed some notes, accents of recognition, human admissions. Henry was still stunned, and I was breathing off the unbearable, willing joy. But the second time, there were no words. My joy was impalpable and terrifying. It swelled within me as I walked the streets. It transpires, it blazes. I cannot conceal it. I am woman. A man has made me submit. Oh, the joy when a woman finds a man she can submit to, the joy of her femaleness expanding in strong arms. Hugo looks at me as we sit by the fire. I am talking drunkenly, brilliantly. He says, “I’ve never seen you look so beautiful. I have never felt your power so strongly. What is the new confidence in you?” He desires me, just as he did that other time, after John’s visit. My conscience dies at that moment. Hugo bears down on me, and I instinctively obey Henry’s whispered words. I close my legs about Hugo, and he exclaims in ecstasy, “Darling, darling, what are you doing? You’re driving me wild. I’ve never felt such joy before!” I cheat him, I deceive him, yet the world does not sink in sulphur-colored mists. Madness conquers. I can no longer put my mosaics together. I just cry and laugh. After a concert, Hugo and I left together, like lovers, he said. That was the day after Henry and I acknowledged certain feelings at the Viking. Hugo was so attentive, so tender. It was a holiday for him. We were having dinner in a restaurant in Montparnasse. I had invented a pretext to call at a friend’s for Henry’s first love letter. It was in my pocketbook. I was thinking of it while Hugo asked me, “Do you want oysters? Take oysters tonight. It’s a special night. Every time I go out with you I feel as if I were taking my mistress out. You are my mistress. I love you more than ever. I want to read Henry’s letter. I excuse myself. I go to the washroom. I read the letter there. It is not very eloquent, and I am touched by the fact. I don’t know what else I feel. I return to the table, dizzy. This was where we met Henry when he returned from Dijon and where I realized I was happy he had returned. On another occasion Hugo and I go to the theatre. I am thinking of Henry. Hugo knows, and he shows the same old tender uneasiness, the desire to believe, and I reassure him. He himself had given me a message that I should call Henry at eight-thirty. So before the play we go to a cafe, and Hugo helps me to find the number of Henry’s office. I joke about what he is going to hear. Henry and I do not say very much: “Did you get my letter?” “Yes.” “Did you get my note?” “No.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  In the middle of lunch, when we were seriously discussing books, and Richard had sailed off on a long tirade, Henry began to laugh. He said, “I’m not laughing at you, Richard, but I just can’t help myself. I don’t care a bit, not a bit who’s right. I’m too happy. I’m just so happy right this moment with all the colors around me, the wine. The whole moment is so wonderful, so wonderful.” He was laughing almost to tears. He was drunk. I was drunk, too, quite. I felt warm and dizzy and happy. We talked for hours. Henry said the truest and deepest things, and he has a way of saying “hmmm” while trailing off on his own introspective journey. Before I met Henry I was intent on my D. H. Lawrence book. It is being published by Edward Titus, and I am working with his assistant, Lawrence Drake. “Where are you from?” he asks me at our first meeting. “I’m half Spanish, half French. But I was raised in America.” “You’ve certainly survived the transplantation.” He appears to be sneering as he talks. But I know better. He takes up the work with tremendous enthusiasm and speed. I’m grateful. He calls me a romantic. I get angry. “I’m sick of my own romanticism!” He has an interesting head—vivid, strong accents of black eyes, black hair, olive skin, sensual nostrils and mouth, a good profile. He looks like a Spaniard, but he is Jewish—Russian, he tells me. He is puzzling to me. He looks raw, easily hurt. I talk warily. When he takes me to his place to go over the proofs, he tells me I interest him. I can’t see why—he seems to have had a lot of experience; why does he bother about a beginner? We talk, fencingly. We work, not so very well. I don’t trust him. When he says nice things to me, I think he is playing on my inexperience. When he puts his arms around me, I think he is amusing himself with an overintense and ridiculous little woman. When he gets more intense, I turn my face away from the new experience of his mustache. My hands are cold and moist. I tell him frankly, “You shouldn’t flirt with a woman who doesn’t know how to flirt.”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  One for each impact of your body against mine. Each blow a sting of joy. Driving in a spiral. The core touched. The womb sucks, back and forth, open, closed. Lips flicking, snake tongues flicking. Ah, the rupture—a blood cell burst with joy. Dissolution. The three of us are on the couch, looking at a map of Europe. Henry asks me, “Are you still gaining weight?” “Yes, continuously.” “Oh, Anaïs, don’t gain weight,” says Fred. “I like you as you are.” Henry smiles. “But Henry likes Renoiresque bodies,” I say. “It’s true,” says Henry. “But I love slenderness. I love virginal breasts.” “I should really love you, Fred. It was a mistake.” Henry does not smile. I know his jealous expressions now, but Fred and I continue to banter. “Fred, after I spend a few days with Henry, I’ll spend two days with you, in a hotel, so I can take Henry there. He loves to be taken to hotels where I have been before. Two days.” “We’ll have breakfast in bed. Mitsouko perfume. A chic hotel. Yes?” Later Henry says, “It’s all right to be joking, but Anaïs, don’t torment me. I’m jealous, terribly jealous.” I want to laugh because I have already forgotten about the Renoir bodies, the virginal breasts. When Henry telephones, I feel his voice in my veins. I want him to talk into me. I eat Henry, I breathe Henry, Henry is in the sun. My cape is his arm around my waist. Café de la Place, Clichy. Midnight. I asked Henry to write something in the diary. He wrote: “I imagine that I am now a very celebrated personage and I am being given one of my own books to autograph. So I write with a stiff hand, a little pompously. Bonjour, Papa! No, I can’t write in your journal now, Anaïs. Someday you will lend it to me, with a few blank pages towards the end—and I will write an index—a diabolical index. Heinrich. Place Clichy. There’s nothing sacred about this book except you.” To encourage him I had said, “There is nothing sacred about this book, and you can even write sideways or upside down in it.” He was wearing a beret and looked thirty years old. Last night when Hugo had to go to a bank function and I realized I could go to Henry, on a soft summer night, I wanted to shout. In the taxi, alone, I sang and rocked my joy, murmuring, “Henry, Henry.” And I kept my legs closed tight, against the invasion of his blood. When I arrived, Henry saw my mood. It flowed from my body and my face. Warm white blood. Henry screwing. There is no other word. His kisses are wet like rain. I have swallowed his sperm. He has kissed the sperm off my lips. I have smelled my own honey on his mouth.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  “ The last of my idylls,” Lea was thinking, as she leaned out over her window-ledge. But the weather over Paris was fine, her echoing courtyard was dapper, with its laurel trees rising ball-shaped in green tubs, and from the room behind her a breath of scented warmth came playing over the nape of her neck: all this gradually helped her to recover her good humour, and her sense of mischief- She watched the silhouettes of women passing on their way down to the Bois. “So skirts ate changing again! ” Lea observed, “ and hats are higher.” She planned sessions with her dressmaker, others with her milliner; the sudden desire to look beautiful made her straighten her back. “Beautiful? For whom? Why, for myself, of course. And then to aggravate old Ma Peloux!” Lea had heard about Cheri’s flight, but knew no more than that. While disapproving of Madame Peloux5s private-detective methods, she did not scruple to listen to a young vendeuse., who would show her gratitude for all Lea’s kindnesses by pouring gossip in her ear at a fitting, or else by sending it to her, with * a thousand thanks for the delicious chocolates’ on a huge sheet of paper embossed with the letter-head of her establishment. A postcard from Lili, forwarded to Lea at Cambo - a postcard scribbled by the dotty old harridan in a trembling hand without commas or full stops — had recounted an incomprehensible story of love and flight and a young wife kept under lock and key at Neuilly. “It was weather like this,” L6a recalled, “the morning I read Lili’s postcard in my bath at Cambo.” She could see the yellow bathroom, the sunlight dancing on the water and ceiling. She could hear the thin-walled villa re-echoing with a great peal of laughter — her own laughter, rather ferocious and none too spontaneous — then the cries that followed it: ‘Rose! Rose!5 Breasts and shoulders out of water, dripping, robust, one magnificent arm outstretched, looking more than ever like a naiad on a fountain, she had waved the card with the tips of her wet fingers. ‘Rose, Rose! Cheri ... Monsieur Peloux has done a bunk! He’s left his wife!5 * That doesn’t surprise me, Madame,’ Rose had said. ‘ The divorce will be gayer than the wedding, when the dead seemed to be burying the dead.5 All through that day Lea had given way to unseemly mirth. “ Oh! that fiendish boy. Oh! the naughty child! Just think of it!” And she shook her head, laughing softly to herself, like a mother whose son has stayed out all night for the first time. A bright varnished park-phaeton flashed past her gates, sparkled behind its prancing high-steppers and vanished almost without a sound on its rubber wheels.

• From What We Lost in the Swamp: Poems (2023)

  The Year I Volunteered at a Hospice Care Living Room with a View How the Constellations Can Save Us The Quiet Hour The Breaking Meet & Greet Living Room Lilies Pockets Dear C, Roots For the Love of Dusk II Sandbox My Brother, Letter to My Former Self The Wagon Game Acknowledgments I [image file=image_rsrc2CN.jpg] WHEN I REALIZED I WAS A GREEN TREE FROG IN ANOTHER LIFEIt was a dark & rainy day in sixth-grade science & the canary-colored light of the overhead projector showed us picture after picture: a montage of camouflaging creatures. The name of the game was simple: Who can find what’s hiding in plain sight? & I did. Every time. The only member of our sleepy-eyed pride who could raise their hand & give the answer. O their baffled eyes, the looks of frustration on their flushed-red faces when they couldn’t understand the advantage I had, how I knew all the tricks of the walking stick, of the green tree frog & the phantom moth. They begged & they begged for me to spill my sacred secret (that I knew because I lived it). Because prey sees prey, & I was keen on all their cleverness, their tactics to survive. Take a closer look & see the seams of my disguise: the backwards ball cap, the Abercrombie clothes, my use of “dude” in every sentence, all just fabrics, a hand-stitched invisibility cloak to hide the boy who used to try on all his sister’s dresses, who liked to play with dolls when no one was around to stop him, who wishes, now, that when the teacher asked the final question, he had pointed to himself. I OFTEN FEELI often feel the way a butterfly flies: chaotically, ​moving too fast to ever really see clearly, like a fighter jet ​flailing, that out of control, engine lost, nose-diving. But then I land, ​briefly, & everything is still, my wings included. & there, right there, in the daisy’s drop of dew, I start to see it: my vivid brightness, before I’m off again, tumbling, a strange & stunning violence on the wind. THE BOY & THE BLUE BIRDI want to see your secrets, the things you’ve hidden up high & out of sight. Little bird, let my autumn shed your tree, let me lay down its thistle crown of crimson leaves. I wish to see your nest, sacred chapel of twigs & grass, the place you go when you seek retreat from song & sea-sky, hidden home in which you rest, undress, confess your sins when no one else is watching. WHAT WE LOST IN THE SWAMPBoys do not kiss boys. They catch frogs. Is what I told myself the second it happened. & there we were, hidden in the hemlocks of a secret swamp. Your lips drifting away from mine like a silent ship leaving harbor. Gone, as quickly as it came. I watched the shame leap into the pond of your face. O the ripples.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The women, however, fell back on a more mysterious and less expensive explanation of her predicament: Aunt Maissa was possessed of spirits. Those whom we called the “damned” or the “dwellers beneath the earth,” because one should avoid naming the demons by their real name unless one does it with music and with offerings, were now becoming particularly obtrusive: the other evening, they had even left a big bruise on her leg, which was a warning. They might indeed drive her to insanity, so her sisters and sisters-in-law decided to hold a meeting on the subject. There, they all spoke at the same time, in their high-pitched voices, but managed all the same to agree on the urgency of holding a ceremony in honor of the demons that live below. A dance invoking their protection would be a wise thing for the whole house. Noucha, the wife of Uncle Aroun, courageously volunteered to take the matter up with her miser husband, as it involved some expense. Her sisters were suddenly moved to the heart and thanked her with tears in their eyes, like an autumn shower that comes over very suddenly. Then they broke up, all agog and happy at the idea of such wonderful and useful fun. My mother brought out her wooden box that she hid against the wall beneath the bed. For lack of space in our common closet, that was where she tucked away her own personal treasures. Among broken trinkets, old ribbons, fragments of bridal veils, old purses and baby clothes, she discovered some weird oriental finery, shapeless and gaudy, all orange, yellow, and green, embroidered with beads and sequins. Then she gathered together all the colored scarves and handkerchiefs that she could find throughout the house. Twice, she went busily out to buy, in the covered markets, her share of the incense: a little bit of the kind that is called ouchak, some of the jaoui kind, and a few sticks of ned. She did everything that could be expected of her as a worthy contribution toward her younger sister’s recovery. Still, her joy was very childish and she could scarcely conceal it; it was written all over her face, and she could no longer refrain from anticipating the event by singing snatches of song from time to time. In spite of her protests, we teased her about all this. On the appointed day, at noon, she was too much intent on preparing for the ceremony to fulfill all her duties as a mother, so that we had to be content with a pot of chick-peas, cooked in water. Whenever it came to the matter of food, we could become really unpleasant with Mother. Quite properly, we blamed the coming ceremony and her for the excessive importance that she seemed to attach to it. Hungry and bad-tempered, we repeated, each of us in turn, the traditional question: “Is that all there is?” “Yes, that’s all.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I stand at the door when he comes in, hands on my hips. I look out of a savage self. Henry approaches, dazed, and does not recognize me until he comes very near and I smile and speak to him. He cannot believe it. He thinks I have gone mad. Then before he has quite awakened I take him to my room. There, on the grate in the fireplace, is a large photograph of John and his letters. They are burning. I smile. Henry sits on the couch. “You frighten me, Anaïs,” he says. “You are so different, and so strange. So dramatic.” I sit on the floor between his knees. “I hate you, Henry. That story about [Osborn’s girl friend] Jeanne . . . You lied to me.” He answers me so gently that I believe him. And if I do not believe him, it does not matter. All the treacheries in the world do not matter. John is burnt away. The present is magnificent. Henry asks me to undress. Everything is shed but the black lace mantilla. He asks me to keep it on and lies on the bed, watching me. I stand before the mirror, shedding carnations, earrings. He looks through the lace at my body. The next day I run about the house cooking. Suddenly I love cooking, for Henry. I cook richly, with infinite care. I enjoy seeing him eat, eating with him. We sit in the garden, in our pajamas, drunk on the air, the caresses of the swaying trees, the songs of birds, attentive dogs licking our hands. Henry’s desire is always coursing. I am ploughed, open. At night, books, talk, passion. As he pours his passion into me I feel that I become beautiful. I show him a hundred faces. He watches me. It all passes like a procession, up to this morning’s climax, before he leaves me, when he sees a burnt face, heavy, sensual, Moorish. There was a storm last night. Marble-sized hail. Sea fury of the trees. Henry sits in an armchair and asks, “Are we going to read Spengler now?” He sits purring like a cat. He has the yawn of a tiger, all the jungle cries of contentment. His voice vibrates in his stomach. I have put my head there and listened, as against an organ. I am lying on the bed. I wear a lace dress, nothing else, because it gives him pleasure to look at me. “Now,” he says, “you look like an Ingres.” I cannot bear the space between us. I sit on the floor. He caresses my hair. He gives me winged kisses on the eyes. He is all tenderness, thoughtfulness. Sensuality was exhausted in the afternoon. But he looks

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  “All who became Christians were together and held all they had for the common use. They sold their property and goods, and shared the proceeds according to their individual needs.” They met for worship in the temple, and met for their meals in their homes. The outflow of this close fellowship was a simple-hearted gladness, so that they could praise God and win the good-will of men. It is amusing to note how our popular expositors treat this Christian communism to-day. They approach it with a sort of deprecatory admiration. It is so useful for proving how noble and loving Christianity was, but it is so awkward if anybody should draw the conclusion that we to-day ought to share our property. They make much of the fact that we have no other instance of communism among the other churches of the New Testament, and that even at Jerusalem the mother of Mark still had a house of her own to live in. They seem more anxious to emphasize that it did not occur twice than to show that it did occur once. But many an ecclesiastical body would be happy if it had as much Scripture to quote for its favorite church practices, and would treat with scorn any suggestion that after all it had “occurred only once.” As a result of this anxiety, it is commonly asserted that the later poverty of the church at Jerusalem was due to its communism. The assertion has been made so often that it is accepted almost as self-evident. Yet there is not the slightest statement in the Bible connecting the two things; it is pure inference. Luke, who is our sole source of information, has not a breath of disapproval. To him it is evidently a beautiful fact, a wonderful demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church. It is hard to escape the feeling that the bias of Luke and of modern Christians is somewhat divergent. At the outset the disciples at Jerusalem simply continued the life they had lived with the Master. They went on doing as they had done with him. They had had a common purse. He had cared for the wants of his family like a father, and they acknowledged that they had never been in want while under him. They were now away from their old homes and occupations in Galilee. So they continued a family life among themselves and shared what they had. As their number increased, the problem of providing for the common meals and for the poor and sick became difficult. Those who were better off, in the glow of brotherly love and religious self-sacrifice, and probably in the expectation of the speedy return of Christ, replenished the common purse by larger offerings. In a few memorable cases they even parted with real estate for this purpose.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Seven years ago today we took the leis from the florist’s boxes and shook the water in which they were packed onto the grass outside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue. The white peacock spread his fan. The organ sounded. She wove white stephanotis into the thick braid that hung down her back. She dropped a tulle veil over her head and the stephanotis loosened and fell. The plumeria blossom tattooed just below her shoulder showed through the tulle. “Let’s do it,” she whispered. The little girls in leis and pale dresses skipped down the aisle and walked behind her up to the high altar. After all the words had been said the little girls followed her out the front doors of the cathedral and around past the peacocks (the two iridescent blue-and-green peacocks, the one white peacock) to the Cathedral house. There were cucumber and watercress sandwiches, a peach-colored cake from Payard, pink champagne. Her choices, all. Sentimental choices, things she remembered. I remembered them too. When she said she wanted cucumber and watercress sandwiches at her wedding I remembered her laying out plates of cucumber and watercress sandwiches on the tables we had set up around the pool for her sixteenth-birthday lunch. When she said she wanted leis in place of bouquets at her wedding I remembered her at three or four or five getting off a plane at Bradley Field in Hartford wearing the leis she had been given when she left Honolulu the night before. The temperature in Connecticut that morning was six degrees below zero and she had no coat (she had been wearing no coat when we left Los Angeles for Honolulu, we had not expected to go on to Hartford) but she had seen no problem. Children with leis don’t wear coats, she advised me. Sentimental choices. On the day of that wedding she got all her sentimental choices except one: she had wanted the little girls to go barefoot in the cathedral (memory of Malibu, she was always barefoot in Malibu, she always had splinters from the redwood deck, splinters from the deck and tar from the beach and iodine for the scratches from the nails in the stairs in between) but the little girls had new shoes for the occasion and wanted to wear them. MR. AND MRS. JOHN GREGORY DUNNE REQUEST THE HONOR OF YOUR PRESENCE AT THE MARRIAGE OF THEIR DAUGHTER, QUINTANA ROO TO MR. GERALD BRIAN MICHAEL ON SATURDAY THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF JULY AT TWO O’CLOCK The stephanotis. Was that another sentimental choice? Did she remember the stephanotis? Is that why she wanted it, is that why she wove it into her braid?

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  That year, 1966, during which the American military presence in Vietnam would reach four hundred thousand and American B-52s had begun bombing the North, was not widely considered an ideal year to take an infant to Southeast Asia, yet it never occurred to me to abandon or even adjust the plan. I even went so far as to shop for what I imagined we would need: Donald Brooks pastel linen dresses for myself, a flowered Porthault parasol to shade the baby, as if she and I were about to board a Pan Am flight and disembark at Le Cercle Sportif . In the end this trip to Saigon did not take place, although its cancellation was by no means based on what might have seemed the obvious reason—we canceled, it turned out, because John had to finish the book he had contracted to write about César Chávez and his National Farm Workers Association and the DiGiorgio grape strike in Delano—and I mention Saigon at all only by way of suggesting the extent of my misconceptions about what having a child, let alone adopting one, might actually entail. How could I not have had misconceptions? I had been handed this perfect baby, out of the blue, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. She could not have been more exactly the baby I wanted. In the first place she was beautiful. Hermosa, chula . Strangers stopped me on the street to tell me so. “I have a beautiful baby girl at St. John’s,” Blake Watson had said, and he did. Everyone sent dresses, an homage to the beautiful baby girl. There the dresses were in her closet, sixty of them (I counted them, again and again), immaculate little wisps of batiste and Liberty lawn on miniature wooden hangers. The miniature wooden hangers, too, were a gift to the beautiful baby girl, another homage from her instantly acquired relatives, besotted aunts and uncles and cousins in West Hartford (John’s family) and Sacramento (mine). I recall changing her dress four times on the afternoon the State of California social worker made her mandated visit to observe the candidate for adoption in the home environment. We sat on the lawn. The candidate for adoption played at our feet. I did not mention to the social worker that Saigon had until recently figured in the candidate’s future. Nor did I mention that current itineraries called for her to sojourn instead at the Starlight Motel in Delano. Arcelia, who cleaned the house and laundered the wisps of batiste, busied herself watering, as anticipated. “As anticipated” because I had prepped Arcelia for the visit.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Would the fear go away for both of us, or would the fear go away only for me? S 10 he was born in the first hour of the third day of March, 1966, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. We were told that we could adopt her late the afternoon of the same day, March third, when Blake Watson, the obstetrician who delivered her, called the house at Portuguese Bend in which we then lived, forty-some miles down the coast from Santa Monica. I was taking a shower and burst into tears when John came into the bathroom to report what Blake Watson had said. “I have a beautiful baby girl at St. John’s,” is what he had said. “I need to know if you want her.” The baby’s mother, he had said, was from Tucson. She had been staying with relatives in California for the birth of the baby. An hour later we stood outside the window of the nursery at St. John’s looking at an infant with fierce dark hair and rosebud features. The beads on her wrist spelled out not her name but “N.I.,” for “No Information,” which was the hospital’s response to any questions that might be asked about a baby being placed for adoption. One of the nurses had tied a pink ribbon in the fierce dark hair. “Not that baby,” John would repeat to her again and again in the years that followed, reenacting the nursery scene, the recommended “choice” narrative, the moment when, of all the babies in the nursery, we picked her. “Not that baby ... that baby. The baby with the ribbon.” “Do that baby,” she would repeat in return, a gift to us, an endorsement of our wisdom in opting to follow the recommended choice narrative. The choice narrative is no longer universally favored by professionals of child care, but it was in 1966. “Do it again. Do the baby with the ribbon.” And later: “Do the part about Dr. Watson calling.” Blake Watson was already a folk figure in this recital. And then: “Tell the part about the shower.” Even the shower had become part of the recommended choice narrative. March 3, 1966. After we left St. John’s that night we stopped in Beverly Hills to tell John’s brother Nick and his wife, Lenny. Lenny offered to meet me at Saks in the morning to buy a layette. She was taking ice from a crystal bucket, making celebratory drinks. Making celebratory drinks was what we did in our family to mark any unusual, or for that matter any usual, occasion. In retrospect we all drank more than we needed to drink but this did not occur to any of us in 1966. Only when I read my early fiction, in which someone was always downstairs making a drink and singing “Big Noise blew in from Winnetka,” did I realize how much we all drank and how little thought we gave to it.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I told him about my “watery” dreams and the dream of a King’s ball. He said the wetness symbolized fecundation, and the love of the King was the conquest of my father through other men. For the moment, he thought, I was on a peak and scarcely needed him. I told him I could not believe psychoanalysis worked so swiftly. I praised its effects extravagantly. His manner towards me affected me joyously, too. I observed again the beauty of his Celtic eyes. Then he made a masterful analysis of my marriage, from bits gleaned here and there. “But,” says Allendy, “now comes the test of absolute maturity: passion. You have molded Hugo like a mother, and he is your child. He cannot arouse your passion. He knows you so intimately that perhaps his passion, too, will turn to another. You have gone through phases together, but now you will drift apart. You yourself have experienced passion with someone else. Tenderness, understanding, and passion are not usually linked together. But then, tenderness and understanding are so rare.” “But they are immature,” I said. “Passion is so powerful.” Allendy smiled, sadly, I thought. Then I said, “This analysis, it seems to me, might apply to Eduardo’s feelings, too.” “No. Eduardo really loves you, and you love him, I believe.” Allendy was wrong. When I left him, still buoyant and courageous, I talked with Eduardo. “Listen, darling,” I said. “I think we really love each other, fraternally. We can’t do without each other, because there is so much understanding between us. If we had married, it would have been a marriage like that of Hugo and me. You would have worked, developed, been happy. We are so delicate and careful with each other. We also want passion. But I can never look at you as I look at other men. You cannot have a passion for me as you would for a woman whose soul you don’t know. Believe me, I’m right. Don’t be hurt. I feel close to you. You need me. We need each other. We’ll find passion elsewhere.” Eduardo realizes I am partly right. We sit very close in the café. We walk together very close. We are half sad, half joyous. It is warm. He smells my perfume. I look at his beautiful face. We desire each other. But it’s a mirage. It’s only because we are so young, and it is summer, and we are walking body against body. Hugo is coming to take me home, and so Eduardo and I kiss, and that is all.