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.

Page 132 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Henry and June (1986)

  There, the big woman works with the flicking of her tongue. The little woman closes her eyes, moans, and trembles in ecstasy. Hugo and I lean over them, taken by that moment of loveliness in the little woman, who offers to our eyes her conquered, quivering body. Hugo is in turmoil. I am no longer woman; I am man. I am touching the core of June’s being. I become aware of Hugo’s feelings and say, “Do you want the woman? Take her. I swear to you I won’t mind, darling.” “I could come with anybody just now,” he answers. The little woman is lying still. Then they are up and joking and the moment passes. Do I want . . . ? They unfasten my jacket; I say no, I don’t want anything. I couldn’t have touched them. Only a minute of beauty—the small woman’s heaving, her hands caressing the other woman’s head. That moment alone stirred my blood with another desire. If we had been a little madder . . . But the room seemed dirty to us. We walked out. Dizzy. Joyous. Elated. We went to dance at the Bal Nègre. One fear was over. Hugo was liberated. We had understood each other’s feelings. Together. Arm in arm. A mutual generosity. I was not jealous of the little woman Hugo had desired. But Hugo thought, “What if there had been a man . . .” So we don’t know yet. All we know is that the evening was beautifully carried off. I had been able to give Hugo a portion of the joy that filled me. And when we returned home, he adored my body because it was lovelier than what he had seen and we sank into sensuality together with new realization. We are killing phantoms. I went to the Viking to meet Eduardo. We have been confiding to each other: he, about a woman in his pension; I, about Henry. We sat in the mellow light. Eduardo is afraid to be left out of my life. “No,” I said, “there is plenty of room. I love Hugo; better than ever, I love Henry and June, and you, too, if you wish.” He smiled. “I’ll read you Henry’s letters,” I said, because he was worrying about my “imagination” (Perhaps Henry is nothing, he was thinking). And as I read to him, he stopped me. He couldn’t bear it. He talks to me about psychoanalysis, which reveals how he loves me, how he sees me now. Henry’s love creates an aureole around me. I sit so securely before Eduardo’s timidity. I watch him approaching me, seeking closeness, a touch of my hand, of my knee. I watch him becoming human. For this moment, a long time ago, I would have given so much, but I have left it all far behind. “Before we leave,” he says, “I want . . .” And he begins to kiss me. “It is Eduardo,” I murmur, pliant. The kiss is lovely.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  This joy, and this belief I want to impart to others more than almost anything else, for this has been to me a new Gospel of courage and resolve and certain reward, a man’s creed teaching that as you grow in wisdom and courage and kindness, all good things are added unto you. I find that I am outrunning my story and giving here a stage of thought and belief that only became mine much later; but the beginning of my individual soul-life was this experience, that I had been blind to natural beauty and now could see; this was the root and germ, so to speak, of the later faith that guided all my mature life, filling me with courage and spilling over into hope and joy ineffable. Very soon the first command of it came to my lips almost every hour: “Blame your own blindness! always blame yourself!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FROM SCHOOL TO AMERICA. Chapter IV. Early in January there was a dress rehearsal of the Trial Scene of “The Merchant of Venice.” The Grandee of the neighborhood who owned the great park, Sir W. W. W., some M.P.’s, notably a Mr. Whalley who had a pretty daughter and lived in the vicinity, and the Vicar and his family were invited, and others whom I did not know; but with the party from the Vicarage came Lucille. The big schoolroom had been arranged as a sort of theatre and the estrade at one end where the Head-Master used to throne it on official occasions, was converted into a makeshift stage and draped by a big curtain that could be drawn back or forth at will. The Portia was a very handsome lad of sixteen named Herbert, gentle and kindly, yet redeemed from effeminacy by the fact that he was the fleetest sprinter in the school and could do the hundred yards in eleven and a half seconds. The “Duke” was, of course, Jones and the merchant “Antonio” a big fellow named Vernon, and I had got Edwards the part of “Bassanio” and a pretty boy in the Fourth Form was taken as “Nerissa.” So far as looks went the cast was passable; but the “Duke” recited his lines as if they had been imperfectly learned and so the “Trial Scene” opened badly. But the part of “Shylock” suited me intimately and I had learned how to recite. Now before E… and Lucille, I was set on doing better than my best. When my cue came I bowed low before the “Duke” and then bowed again to left and right of him in silence and formally, as if I, the outcast Jew, were saluting the whole court; then in a voice that at first I simply made slow and clear and hard, I began the famous reply: “I have possessed your Grace of what I purpose; And by our Holy Sabbath have I sworn To have the due and forfeit of my bond.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  After breakfast, about five o’clock in the morning, I would ride away from the wagon till it was out of sight and then abandon myself to the joy of solitude, with no boundary between plain and sky. The air was brisk and dry, as exhilarating as champagne and even when the sun reached the zenith and became blazing hot, the air remained lightsome and invigorating. Mid Kansas is 2000 odd feet above sea-level and the air is so dry that an animal when killed, dries up without stinking and in a few months the hide’s filled with mere dust. Game was plentiful, hardly an hour would elapse before I had got half a dozen ruffed grouse or a deer and then I would walk my pony back to the midday camp with perhaps a new wildflower in hand whose name I wished to learn. After the midday meal I used to join Bob in the wagon and learn some Spanish words or phrases from him or question him about his knowledge of cattle. In the first week we became great friends: I found to my amusement that Bob was just as voluble in Spanish as he was tongue-tied in English, and his command of Spanish oaths, objurgations and indecencies was astounding. Bob despised all things American with an unimaginable ferocity and this interested me by its apparent unreason. Once or twice on the way down we had a race; but Reece on a big Kentucky thoroughbred called ‘Shiloh’ won easily. He told me however, that there was a young mare called ‘Blue Devil’ at the ranch which was as fast as Shiloh and of rare stay and stamina: “You can have her, if you can ride her,” he threw out carelessly and I determined to win the ‘Devil’ if I could. In about ten days we reached the ranch near Eureka; it was set in five thousand acres of prairie, a big frame dwelling, that would hold twenty men; but it wasn’t nearly so well-built as the great, brick stable, the pride of Reece’s eye, which would house forty horses and provide half a dozen with good loose boxes besides, in the best English style.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  Blake Watson had delivered her and Morty’s four children. Blake Watson had also delivered the adopted daughter of Howard and Lou Erskine, old friends of Nick and Lenny’s (Howard had gone to Williams with Nick) who happened to be on the boat that weekend. Maybe because the Erskines were there or maybe because I had mentioned wanting a baby or maybe because we had all had the drink we were thinking about having, the topic of adoption had entered the ether. Diana herself, it seemed, had been adopted, but this information had been withheld from her until she was twenty-one and it had become necessary for some financial reason that she know. Her adoptive parents had handled the situation by revealing the secret to (this had not seemed unusual at the time) Diana’s agent. Diana’s agent had handled the situation by taking Diana to lunch at (nor at the time had this) the Beverly Hills Hotel. Diana got the news in the Polo Lounge. She could remember fleeing into the bougainvillea around the bungalows, screaming. That was all. Yet the next week I was meeting Blake Watson. When he called us from the hospital and asked if we wanted the beautiful baby girl there had been no hesitation: we wanted her. When they asked us at the hospital what we would call the beautiful baby girl there had been no hesitation: we would call her Quintana Roo. We had seen the name on a map when we were in Mexico a few months before and promised each other that if ever we had a daughter (dreamy speculation, no daughter had been in the offing) Quintana Roo would be her name. The place on the map called Quintana Roo was still not yet a state but a territory. The place on the map called Quintana Roo was still frequented mainly by archaeologists, herpetologists, and bandits. The institution that became spring break in Cancún did not yet exist. There were no bargain flights. There was no Club Med. The place on the map called Quintana Roo was still terra incognita. As was the infant in the nursery at St. John’s. L’adoptada, she came to be called in the household. The adopted one. M’ija she was also called. My daughter. Adoption, I was to learn although not immediately, is hard to get right. As a concept, even what was then its most widely approved narrative carried bad news: if someone “chose” you, what does that tell you? Doesn’t it tell you that you were available to be “chosen”? Doesn’t it tell you, in the end, that there are only two people in the world? The one who “chose” you? And the other who didn’t? Are we beginning to see how the word “abandonment” might enter the picture?

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  It was at the Ambassador, in the Pump Room at midnight, that she ate caviar for the first time, a mixed success since she wanted it again at every meal thereafter and did not yet entirely understand the difference between “on expenses” and “not on expenses.” She had happened to be in the Pump Room at midnight because we had taken her that night to Chicago Stadium to see a band we were following, Chicago, research for A Star Is Born. She had sat through the concert onstage, on one of the amps. The band had played “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” and “25 or 6 to 4.” She had referred to the band as “the boys.” When we left Chicago Stadium with the boys that night the crowd had rocked the car, delighting her. She did not want to go to her grandmother’s in West Hartford the next day, she had advised me when we got back to the Ambassador, she wanted to go to Detroit with the boys. So much for keeping our “private” life separate from our “working” life. In fact she was inseparable from our working life. Our working life was the very reason she happened to be in these hotels. When she was five or six, for example, we took her with us to Tucson, where The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean was shooting. The Hilton Inn, where the production was based during its Tucson location, sent a babysitter to stay with her while we watched the dailies. The babysitter asked her to get Paul Newman’s autograph. A crippled son was mentioned. Quintana got the autograph, delivered it to the babysitter, then burst into tears. It was never clear to me whether she was crying about the crippled son or about feeling played by the babysitter. Dick Moore was the cinematographer on The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean but she seemed to make no connection between this Dick Moore she encountered at the Hilton Inn in Tucson and the Dick Moore she encountered on our beach. On our beach everyone was home, and so was she. At the Hilton Inn in Tucson everyone was working, and so was she. “Working” was a way of being she understood at her core. When she was nine I took her with me on an eight-city book tour: New York, Boston, Washington, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago. “How do you like our monuments,” Katharine Graham had asked her in Washington. She had seemed mystified but game. “What monuments,” she had asked with interest, entirely unaware that most children who visited Washington were shown the Lincoln Memorial instead of National Public Radio and The Washington Post. Her favorite city on this tour had been Dallas. Her least favorite had been Boston. Boston, she had complained, was “all white.”

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

  Reply to Objection 3: Everyone has a claim to his own inheritance or bodily members, wherefore it is not strange that he should grieve at their loss, whether this be through his own or another’s fault: hence it is clear that the argument is not based on a true comparison. Reply to Objection 4: The gift of Christ surpasses the sin of Adam, as stated in Rom. 5:15, seqq. Hence it does not follow that unbaptized children have as much of evil as the baptized have of good. Reply to Objection 5: Although unbaptized children are separated from God as regards the union of glory, they are not utterly separated from Him: in fact they are united to Him by their share of natural goods, and so will also be able to rejoice in Him by their natural knowledge and love. OF THE QUALITY OF SOULS WHO EXPIATE ACTUAL SIN OR ITS PUNISHMENT IN PURGATORY (SIX ARTICLES)We must next treat of the souls which after this life expiate the punishment of their actual sins in the fire of Purgatory. Under this head there are six points of inquiry: (1) Whether the pain of Purgatory surpasses all the temporal pains of this life? (2) Whether that punishment is voluntary? (3) Whether the souls in Purgatory are punished by the demons? (4) Whether venial sin as regards its guilt is expiated by the pains of Purgatory? (5) Whether the fire of Purgatory frees from the debt of punishment? (6) Whether one is freed from that punishment sooner than another? Whether the pains of Purgatory surpass all the temporal pains of this life?Objection 1: It would seem that the pains of Purgatory do not surpass all the temporal pains of this life. Because the more passive a thing is the more it suffers if it has the sense of being hurt. Now the body is more passive than the separate soul, both because it has contrariety to a fiery agent, and because it has matter which is susceptive of the agent’s quality: and this cannot be said of the soul. Therefore the pain which the body suffers in this world is greater than the pain whereby the soul is cleansed after this life. Objection 2: Further, the pains of Purgatory are directly ordained against venial sins. Now since venial sins are the least grievous, the lightest punishment is due to them, if the measure of the stripes is according to the measure of the fault. Therefore the pain of Purgatory is the lightest of all.

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

  Further, it is written (Is. 56:24): “They shall satiate [*Douay: ‘They shall be a loathsome sight to all flesh.’] the sight of all flesh.” Now satiety denotes refreshment of the mind. Therefore the blessed will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. I answer that, A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly. Reply to Objection 1: To rejoice in another’s evil as such belongs to hatred, but not to rejoice in another’s evil by reason of something annexed to it. Thus a person sometimes rejoices in his own evil as when we rejoice in our own afflictions, as helping us to merit life: “My brethren, count it all joy when you shall fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2). Reply to Objection 2: Although God rejoices not in punishments as such, He rejoices in them as being ordered by His justice. Reply to Objection 3: It is not praiseworthy in a wayfarer to rejoice in another’s afflictions as such: yet it is praiseworthy if he rejoice in them as having something annexed. However it is not the same with a wayfarer as with a comprehensor, because in a wayfarer the passions often forestall the judgment of reason, and yet sometimes such passions are praiseworthy, as indicating the good disposition of the mind, as in the case of shame pity and repentance for evil: whereas in a comprehensor there can be no passion but such as follows the judgment of reason. OF THE GIFTS* OF THE BLESSED (FIVE ARTICLES)[*The Latin ‘dos’ signifies a dowry.] We must now consider the gifts of the blessed; under which head there are five points of inquiry: (1) Whether any gifts should be assigned to the blessed? (2) Whether a gift differs from beatitude? (3) Whether it is fitting for Christ to have gifts? (4) Whether this is competent to the angels? (5) Whether three gifts of the soul are rightly assigned? Whether any gifts should be assigned as dowry to the blessed?Objection 1: It would seem that no gifts should be assigned as dowry to the blessed. For a dowry (Cod. v, 12, De jure dot. 20: Dig. xxiii, 3, De jure dot.) is given to the bridegroom for the upkeep of the burdens of marriage. But the saints resemble not the bridegroom but the bride, as being members of the Church. Therefore they receive no dowry.

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

  Further, it is written (Heb. 11:39): “All these being approved by the testimony of faith received not the promise,” i.e. full beatitude of soul and body, since “God has provided something better for us, lest they should be consummated,” i.e. perfected, “without us—in order that,” as a gloss observes, “through all rejoicing each one might rejoice the more.” But the resurrection will not precede the glorification of bodies, because “He will reform the body of our lowness made like to the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:21), and the children of the resurrection will be “as the angels . . . in heaven” (Mat. 22:30). Therefore the resurrection will be delayed till the end of the world, when all shall rise together. I answer that, As Augustine states (De Trin. iii, 4) “Divine providence decreed that the grosser and lower bodies should be ruled in a certain order by the more subtle and powerful bodies”: wherefore the entire matter of the lower bodies is subject to variation according to the movement of the heavenly bodies. Hence it would be contrary to the order established in things by Divine providence if the matter of lower bodies were brought to the state of incorruption, so long as there remains movement in the higher bodies. And since, according to the teaching of faith, the resurrection will bring men to immortal life conformably to Christ Who “rising again from the dead dieth now no more” (Rom. 6:9), the resurrection of human bodies will be delayed until the end of the world when the heavenly movement will cease. For this reason, too, certain philosophers, who held that the movement of the heavens will never cease, maintained that human souls will return to mortal bodies such as we have now—whether, as Empedocles, they stated that the soul would return to the same body at the end of the great year, or that it would return to another body; thus Pythagoras asserted that “any soul will enter any body,” as stated in De Anima i, 3. Reply to Objection 1: Although the head is more conformed to the members by conformity of proportion (which is requisite in order that it have influence over the members) than one member is to another, yet the head has a certain causality over the members which the members have not; and in this the members differ from the head and agree with one another. Hence Christ’s resurrection is an exemplar of ours, and through our faith therein there arises in us the hope of our own resurrection. But the resurrection of one of Christ’s members is not the cause of the resurrection of other members, and consequently Christ’s resurrection had to precede the resurrection of others who have all to rise again at the consummation of the world.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I say, “You see a beautiful June now.” “No, I hate her!” “You hate her?” “Yes, I hate her,” Henry says, “because I see by your notes that we are her dupes, that you are duped, that there is one pernicious, destructive direction to her lies. Insidiously, they are meant to deform me in your eyes, and you in my eyes. If June returns, she will poison us against each other. I fear that.” “There is something between us, Henry, a tie which is not quite possible for June to comprehend or to seize.” “The mind,” he murmured. “For that she will hate us, yes, and she will combat with her own tools.” “And her tools are lies,” he said. We were both so acutely aware of her power over us, of the new ties which bound us together. I said, “If I had the means to help bring June back, would you want me to do it?” Henry winced and suddenly lurched towards me. “Ah, don’t ask me such a question, Anaïs, don’t ask me.” One day we were talking about his writing. “Perhaps you couldn’t write here at Louveciennes,” I said. “It’s too peaceful, nothing driving you.” “It would just be a different writing,” he said. He was thinking of Proust, whose handling of Albertine haunts him. How far we are from his drunken letter. Yesterday he was disarming; he was so whole. How he absorbed! June rarely confided in him. Will he turn around and deny all his feelings? I teased him. “Perhaps all I have written is untrue, untrue of June, untrue of me. Perhaps it’s hypocrisy.” “No! No!” He knew. Real passions, real loves, real impulses. “For the first time I see some beauty in it all,” says Henry. I am afraid of not having been truthful enough. I am amazed at Henry’s emotion. “Am I not the Idiot?” I ask. “No, you see , you just see more,” says Henry. “What you see is there, all right. Yes.” He reflects as he talks. He often repeats a phrase, to give himself time to reflect. What goes on behind that compact forehead fascinates me. The extravagance of Dostoevsky’s language has re-leased both of us. He was a portentous author for Henry. Now, when we live with the same fervor, the same temperature, the same extravagance, I am in bliss. This is the life, the talk, these are the emotions which belong to me. I breathe freely now. I am at home. I am myself. After being with Henry, I go to meet Eduardo. “I want you, Anaïs! Give me another chance! You belong to me. How I suffered this afternoon, knowing you were with Henry. I never knew jealousy before; and now it is so strong it is killing me.” His face is terrifyingly white. He always smiles, as I do.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  So when I do a SISA reading to raise funds for the women’s collectives in Soweto, or to raise money for Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, I am choosing to use myself for things in which I passionately believe. When I speak to rally support in the urgent war against apartheid in South Africa and the racial slaughter that is even now spreading across the U.S., when I demand justice in the police shotgun killing of a Black grandmother and lynchings in northern California and in Central Park in New York City, I am making a choice of how I wish to use my power. This work gives me a tremendous amount of energy back in satisfaction and in belief, as well as in a vision of how I want this earth to be for the people who come after me. When I work with young poets who are reaching for the power of their poetry within themselves and the lives they choose to live, I feel I am working to capacity, and this gives me deep joy, a reservoir of strength I draw upon for the next venture. Right now. This makes it far less important that it will not be forever. It never was. The energies I gain from my work help me neutralize those implanted forces of negativity and self-destructiveness that is white america’s way of making sure I keep whatever is powerful and creative within me unavailable, ineffective, and nonthreatening. But there is a terrible clarity that comes from living with cancer that can be empowering if we do not turn aside from it. What more can they do to me? My time is limited, and this is so for each one of us. So how will the opposition reward me for my silences? For the pretense that this is in fact the best of all possible worlds? What will they give me for lying? A lifelong Safe Conduct Pass for everyone I love? Another lifetime for me? The end to racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Cruelty? The common cold? November 13, 1986 New York City I do not find it useful any longer to speculate upon cancer as a political weapon. But I’m not being paranoid when I say my cancer is as political as if some CIA agent brushed past me in the A train on March 15, 1965, and air-injected me with a long-fused cancer virus. Or even if it is only that I stood in their wind to do my work and the billows flayed me. What possible choices do most of us have in the air we breathe and the water we must drink?

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, hearing these words, was the joyfullest woman in the world and answered, saying, 'Nothing, having regard to your fashions, could ever make me believe that aught should ensue to me of my coming other than this that I see you do in the matter; whereof I shall still be beholden to you.' Then, taking leave, she returned, under honourable escort, to Messer Gilberto and told him that which had passed, of which there came about a very strait and loyal friendship between him and Messer Ansaldo. Moreover, the nigromancer, to whom the gentleman was for giving the promised guerdon, seeing Gilberto's generosity towards his wife's lover and that of the latter towards the lady, said, 'God forbid, since I have seen Gilberto liberal of his honour and you of your love, that I should not on like wise be liberal of my hire; wherefore, knowing it[455] will stand you in good stead, I intend that it shall be yours.' At this the gentleman was ashamed and studied to make him take or all or part; but, seeing that he wearied himself in vain and it pleasing the nigromancer (who had, after three days, done away his garden) to depart, he commended him to God and having extinguished from his heart his lustful love for the lady, he abode fired with honourable affection for her. How say you now, lovesome ladies? Shall we prefer [Gentile's resignation of] the in a manner dead lady and of his love already cooled for hope forspent, before the generosity of Messer Ansaldo, whose love was more ardent than ever and who was in a manner fired with new hope, holding in his hands the prey so long pursued? Meseemeth it were folly to pretend that this generosity can be evened with that." [Footnote 455: _i.e._ the money promised him by way of recompense.] THE SIXTH STORY [Day the Tenth] KING CHARLES THE OLD, THE VICTORIOUS, FALLETH ENAMOURED OF A YOUNG GIRL, BUT AFTER, ASHAMED OF HIS FOND THOUGHT, HONOURABLY MARRIETH BOTH HER AND HER SISTER

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  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. Lenny added more ice to my glass and took the crystal bucket to the kitchen for a refill. “Saks because if you spend eighty dollars they throw in the bassinette,” she added as she went. I took the glass and put it down. I had not considered the need for a bassinette. I had not considered the need for a layette. The baby with the fierce dark hair stayed that night and the next two in the nursery at St.

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

  To my amazement, Ken was much better than “normal.” His presence and care helped fill the paternal hole in my heart with a stable, consistent love I had never known. He came to my after-school activities and parent-teacher conferences. And yes, he took me out for sundaes, but not after I received As on my report card (which I never did). Instead, he would take me out after I had owned my screwups, like the time I admitted to shoplifting a barrette at the mall. My mom wanted to murder me, but Ken calmed her down and then took me and the stolen accessory to the store manager so I could apologize. He had the good sense to know my sheer embarrassment would be enough to cure my sticky fingers—which it did. In all my earlier father fantasies, I hadn’t known that what I really wanted was a dad who got me, who not only saw me for me but loved me for me. Four years after I made fun of his mustache, Ken adopted me, officially becoming my father. For the big day, my mom let me buy an outfit with little embroidered golf balls on it—my way of showing him that I cared about the stuff he loved and was grateful to be included in his heart. Mom and Dad parented very differently. She took my every teenage whim seriously. Whereas he never bit. For example, when I wanted to change my name to Jasmine, it drove her nuts: “Kristin, I named you Kristin for a reason! Jasmine is not a name; it is a flower!” This, of course, made me want to be Jasmine even more. Meanwhile, when I floated the topic at dinner, Dad would slowly nod and say, “Jasmine. That’s a nice name.” On the long-awaited day when I officially became a daughter who had a father, Dad figured out how to put Jasmine behind us once and for all. We were in the judge’s chamber when he turned to me with his big smile and said, “Now’s your chance to officially become Jasmine Carr.” I never uttered the name Jasmine again. Year after year, Dad exceeded all my dreams of what a father should be. To go from the pain and neglect of having no father to having one like Dad felt like nothing short of a miracle. And every time he showed up for me (the occasions too numerous to count) with a reassuring “It will be OK,” I was reminded of that miracle. And yet, the mystery around my biological father continued to be a source of pain as I grew into a young adult. BROKEN ROADA few years after the adoption, Dad and Mom drove me, at my request, to meet the fella responsible for 50 percent of my genetic material—my bio dad.

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

  But depriving ourselves of it is the opposite of what we need when we’re struggling. In fact, the more we’re struggling, the more we need to prioritize joy. Much of our recovery takes place through the process of changing our thoughts and adjusting our behavior. We can’t control what happened, but we can control how we respond. We can choose to proactively find and fight for joy, even in the midst of hardship. George Bonanno, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, describes grief as an emotion that oscillates: “Over time the cycle widens, and gradually we return to a state of equilibrium. One of the ways we achieve this adaptive oscillation in and out of sadness is by switching to more positive states of mind.” He goes on to say that most of us are more capable of making the switch than we think. “We don’t expect to find joy and even laughter within our pain, but when we do, it makes sense, and we feel better, even if temporarily.” One of the reasons I’ve included humor in this book is because laughter helps us absorb and metabolize the medicine. Personally speaking, humor keeps me sane and, you guessed it, joyful. I need to poke fun at cancer, grief, death, and, most of all, myself. When I’m at my lowest, I look for something to laugh about. If I can’t find anything, I create it. MORE LIKE THIS Many of the seeds planted throughout this book are meant to help us connect more deeply to ourselves and to what matters most in our lives. Whatever crossroads we find ourselves at, this level of self-connection will eventually build self-trust. And when that muscle of selftrust is strengthened, weathering uncertainty becomes less daunting. Yes, we may struggle and stumble again, but damned if we don’t know how to get back up. Think back on who you were a few years ago and all that you’ve navigated since. There were plenty of unknowns then (some of them unthinkable) and yet you managed to get here, to this place of wanting to heal and experience deeper authenticity. Hey, that’s something to be very proud of. Let your past survival be your prologue to thriving. Remember the post-traumatic growth we talked about in Chapter 5 ? Well, this is an important concept to keep in mind as you move ahead, with bravery, into your new life. You don’t have to wait for all the pieces to fall perfectly into place to start living more fully, or for the first time, or even again. It’s OK to rebuild, armed with the priceless insight you had to develop to survive—hard-won wisdom no one would ever choose to earn but which makes you more real and experienced for it. In different ways, we have all become more ourselves, and that’s a beautiful thing. You are and will always be a survivor. It’s OK to thrive once more.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic—the sensual—those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings. Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, “It feels right to me,” acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a hand-maiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge. The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference. Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  In Gare St. Lazare I had seen a whore I wanted so much to talk to, and I imagined myself going out with her. Now, bursting into Henry’s apartment, as June might have done, I could have brought about a curious event, which Henry would have liked to have heard about later. But instantly I became aware that he had been writing, he was in a serious mood, I had disturbed him. He had been hoping I would sit down with him and help him organize his book. My mood evaporated. I even felt contrite. June would have interrupted the writing, precipitated Henry into more experiences, delayed the digestion of them, shone with the brilliancy of a Fate in motion, and Henry would have cursed her and then said, “June is an interesting character.” So I went home to Louveciennes and slept. And the next day when Henry asks me, “What did you do last night?” I wish I had something to tell him. I assume a strange look. He thinks he will read about it later in the journal. I wonder how it feels to have read the whole of my red journal. Henry did not say very much while he was reading, but he shook his head occasionally or laughed. He did say that my journal was terribly frank, and that the descriptions of sensual feelings were unbelievably strong. I didn’t mince my words. I had drawn him well, flatteringly but truly. What I said about June was all true. He expected something like my affair with Eduardo. He was sexually stirred by my dream of June and by other pages. “Of course,” he said, “you are a narcissist. That is the raison dêtre of the journal. Journal writing is a disease. But it’s all right. It’s very interesting. I don’t know of any journal more interesting. I don’t know of any woman writing so frankly.” I protested, because I thought a narcissist was one who only loved himself, and it seemed to me . . . It was narcissism anyway, said Henry. But I feel that he admired the journal. He did tease me about Fred, saying he feared I would give myself to him as I did to Eduardo, out of sympathy, and he was jealous. He kissed me as he said this. Hugo comes back, and he seems like a young son to me. I feel old, battered but tender and joyful. I am resting on the flesh bed of an enormous fatigue. Everything I carry away from Henry is enormous. If I fall asleep, it is because I am overloaded. I sleep because one hour with Henry contains five years of my life, and one phrase, one caress answers the expectations of a hundred nights. When I hear him laugh, I say, “I have heard Rabelais.” And I swallow his laughter like bread and wine.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  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. I am always concerned over Hugo, as if he were my child. It is because I love him best. I wish he were ten years older. Henry asked me, last time, “Have I been less brutal, less passionate than you expected? Did my writing perhaps lead you to expect more?” I was amazed. I reminded him how almost the first words I wrote him after our meeting were, “The mountain of words has sundered, literature has fallen away.” I meant that real feelings had begun, and that the intense sensualism of his writing was one thing, and our sensuality together was another, a real thing. Even Henry, with his adventurous life, does not altogether have confidence. No wonder Eduardo and I, over-tender. lacked it to a tragic degree. It was that delicate confidence we nurtured at our last meeting, Eduardo and I, trying to mend the harm we did each other unwillingly, trying to perfect and heal the course of a strange destiny.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. 10. in Ev.) By the word which is heard the spirit is kindled, the chill of dulness departs, the mind becomes awakened with heavenly desire. It rejoices to hear heavenly precepts, and every command in which it is instructed, is as it were adding a faggot to the fire. THEOPHYLACT. Their hearts then were turned either by the fire of our Lord’s words, to which they listened as the truth, or because as He expounded the Scriptures, their hearts wore greatly struck within them, that He who was speaking was the Lord. Therefore were they so rejoiced, that without delay they returned to Jerusalem. And hence what follows, And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem. They rose up indeed the same hour, but they arrived after many hours, as they had to travel sixty stades. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. l. iii. c. 25.) It had been already reported that Jesus had risen by the women, and by Simon Peter, to whom He had appeared. For these two disciples found them talking of these things when they came to Jerusalem; as it follows, And they found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. BEDE. It seems that our Lord appeared to Peter first of all those whom the four Evangelists and the Apostle mention. CHRYSOSTOM. For He did not shew Himself to all at the same time, in order that He might sow the seeds of faith. For he who had first seen and was sure, told it to the rest. Afterwards the word going forth prepared the mind of the hearer for the sight, and therefore He appeared first to him who was of all the most worthy and faithful. For He had need of the most faithful soul to first receive this sight, that it might be least disturbed by the unexpected appearance. And therefore He is first seen by Peter, that he who first confessed Christ should first deserve to see His resurrection, and also because he had denied Him He wished to see him first, to console him, lest he should despair. But after Peter, He appeared to the rest, at one time fewer in number, at another more, which the two disciples attest; for it follows, And they told what things were done by the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. AUGUSTINE. (ut sup.) But with respect to what Mark says, that they told the rest, and they did not believe them, whereas Luke says, that they had already begun to say, The Lord is risen indeed, what must we understand, except that there were some even then who refused to believe this? 24:36–4036. And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 37. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed they had seen a spirit.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I am half-moved, half-taken. But he does not pursue the desire. He had wanted a half-measure. Here it was. We leave the place. We take a taxi. He is overwhelmed with the joy of touching me. “Impossible,” he cries out. “At last! But it means more to me than to you.” It is true. I am moved only because I have become accustomed to desiring that very beautiful mouth. Look what I have done! Look at the spectacle of Eduardo’s torment. My beautiful Eduardo, Keats and Shelley, poems and crocuses—so many hours of looking into his limpid green eyes and seeing the reflections of men and whores. For thirteen years his face, his mind, his imagination turned towards me, but his body was dead. His body is alive now. He moans my name. “When will I see you? I must see you tomorrow.” Kisses, on the eyes, on the neck. The world seems to have turned upside down. Tomorrow it will die, I thought. But tomorrow, because I sit expecting nothing, Eduardo’s madness returns, and I feel, for the first time, destiny , an imperative need of a psychological resolution. We walk in full sunshine to a hotel he knows, we climb stairs, gaily, we enter a yellow room. I ask him to close the curtains. We are weary of dreams, of imaginings, of tragedy, of literature. Downstairs he pays for the room. I say to the woman, “Thirty francs is too much for us. Next time can’t you let it for less?” And in the street we burst out laughing: the next time! The miracle is accomplished. We walk, expanded. We are very hungry. We go to the Viking and eat four big sandwiches (there was a time when I couldn’t swallow in Eduardo’s presence). “How much I owe you!” he cries. And in my heart I answer, “How much you owe Henry.” I cannot help feeling today that some part of me stands aside watching me live and marveling. Thrown into life without experience, naive, I feel that something has saved me. I feel equal to life. It is like the scenes of an exceptional play. Henry guided me. No. He waited. He watched me. I moved, I acted. I did unexpected things, surprising to myself—that moment, Henry mentions, when I sat on the edge of the bed. I had been standing before the mirror combing my hair. He lay in the bed and said, “I do not feel at ease with you yet.” Impulsively, swiftly, I went to the bed, sat near him, put my face very near his. My coat slipped off, and the straps of my chemise, too, and in the whole gesture, in what I said, there was something so naturally giving, pliant, human that he couldn’t talk. I feel that when Henry talks or writes to me he seeks another language.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I returned to my chair to think, and soon found the solution. Next day I again crouched before the girl’s legs, choking with emotion. I put my pencil near her toes, and reached round between her legs with my left hand as if to get it, taking care to touch her calf. She shrieked, and drew back her legs, holding my hand tight between them, and cried: “What are you doing there!” “Getting my pencil”, I said humbly, “it rolled.” “There it is”, she said, kicking it with her foot. “Thanks” I replied, overjoyed, for the feel of her soft legs was still on my hand. “You’re a funny little fellow”, she said, but I didn’t care; I had had my first taste of Paradise and the forbidden fruit—authentic heaven! I have no recollection of her face: it seemed pleasant; that’s all I remember. None of the girls made any impression on me but I can still recall the thrill of admiration and pleasure her shapely limbs gave me. I record this incident at length, because it stands alone in my memory, and because it proves that sex-feeling may show itself in early childhood. One day about 1890 I had Meredith, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde dining with me in Park Lane and the time of sex-awakening was discussed. Both Pater and Wilde spoke of it as a sign of puberty; Pater thought it began about 13 or 14 and Wilde to my amazement set it as late as 16. Meredith alone was inclined to put it earlier. “It shows sporadically”, he said, “and sometimes before puberty.” I recalled the fact that Napoleon tells how he was in love before he was five years old with a school-mate called Giacominetta, but even Meredith laughed at this and would not believe that any real sex-feeling could show itself so early. To prove the point, I gave my experience as I have told it here, and brought Meredith to pause: “very interesting”, he thought, “but peculiar!” “In her abnormalities”, says Goethe, “Nature reveals her secrets”; here is an abnormality, perhaps as such, worth noting. I hadn’t another sensation of sex till nearly six years later when I was eleven, since which time such emotions have been almost incessant. My exaltation to the oldest class in arithmetic got me into trouble by bringing me into relations with the headmistress, Mrs. Frost, who was very cross and seemed to think that I should spell as correctly as I did sums. When she found I couldn’t, she used to pull my ears and got into the habit of digging her long thumb-nail into my ear till it bled. I didn’t mind the smart; in fact, I was delighted, for her cruelty brought me the pity of the elder girls who used to wipe my ears with their pocket-handkerchiefs and say that old Frost was a beast and a cat.