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 What Belongs to You (2016)

  Mitko had told me that the hotel was close to the sea, and as I turned from our street into the main plaza, I gasped at the horizon of water framed grandly by the pillars at the entrance of the Sea Garden. I quickly got lost in this large park, wandering paths that seemed to lead toward the water only to veer away. I loved the silence of the morning, and also the solitude that seemed part of the design of the place, or rather the rhythm it established of solitude and conviviality, the narrow, wooded paths giving out suddenly onto plazas with benches gathered at observatory points over the sea, which was endless and gray and pierced ceaselessly by gulls. After the desolation of the landscape I had seen the day before, I was moved to be in a place designed so clearly with beauty in mind. The very layout of the paths, with their apparent aimlessness, seemed to rebuke the bare utility of the buildings we had passed on the bus. The park was built shortly after liberation, and as I wandered I came upon statues of revolutionaries and writers placed here and there along the paths. Some of their names were familiar to me, but not many of their stories, so that it was like walking a peculiarly lyrical account of the past, free of the usual narratives of triumph and loss. There were signs, too, in the darkest and most overgrown eddies, of the park’s other life, secret and ludic: cigarette butts and bottles and the occasional distended dry husk of a condom. They must have been left there the previous summer, when these paths would have been a carnival, filled with vacationers from across Europe, the beautiful young fueled by night and heat and the ever-present sea. It was the sea I longed for now, after so much misdirection and delay. Again and again the staircases I encountered leading down from the garden’s observatories to the beach were cordoned off, in such crumbling disrepair as to prevent safe passage. I was aware of time passing and knew I should get back to the hotel, to Mitko who might be waking to find me gone.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Hello,’ he said breezily, and then gambolled along backwards in front of us, so as to get a good look at the two of us. I thought it must be like being filmed, walking towards an ever-receding camera, and I put on silly faces to make him laugh. When he decided he liked us he dropped into place between us, and we swung along hand-in-hand. He was as touching and confidential as ever, and I felt we must look like a young couple that by some dazzling agamogenesis had produced this golden-haired offspring. I was keeping an eye out for the house numbers and we were already nearly there. ‘We’re going in here, darling,’ I said, and Phil looked up a shade apprehensively while Rupert, disappointed that our meeting was over so soon, took on a serious air, not quite understanding what was going on, and glancing from one to the other of us, as though some decision had to be taken. ‘Why don’t you come round for tea one day?’ I suggested. ‘If old Pollywog will let you.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. But something else was clearly worrying him and he tugged on my hand and led me off to several parked cars’ length away. He looked around carefully, and I knew what he was going to talk about. For a moment I thought he was going to tell me he had seen Arthur, and I felt that perhaps life would suddenly become quite different. ‘What ever happened to that boy?’ he asked. ‘Oh, he went away a bit ago,’ I said plausibly, as if it were a lie. ‘Did he manage to run away all right, then?’ ‘Oh yes—he got clean away.’ ‘Have you heard where he went to? Did he go abroad?’ ‘Funnily enough, old chap, I don’t know quite where he is. It was all top secret, you know. I hope you didn’t tell anyone about it?’ ‘No,’ he whispered, shocked that I could imagine that. ‘As a matter of fact,’ it struck me, ‘if you should see him I’d quite like to know. It would have to be really hush-hush, though. Keep your eyes skinned when you’re going for a walk or anything’ (here he rubbed his eyes quickly, carrying out my orders at once) ‘and if you do see him, and you’re really sure it’s him, why don’t you give me a ring?’ ‘All right,’ he said. I was glad I had made a little game or experiment out of it, and began already to look anxiously forward to it.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  During this practice, Jay is repeatedly thrown in against the assistant coaches on the Linn-Mar staff, who wrestle him in alternating turns of a few minutes at a time. It’s a necessity; Streicher says there is no one on the roster capable of wrestling Jay at his required level of intensity for any length of time. The competition is fair; Streicher has insisted upon hiring only assistants who wrestled in college. It comes in handy here, with Jason Haag and CJ McDonald and Kevin McCauley all trading off against Jay, CJ and Kevin with a huge weight advantage and Haag with his wealth of experience and trickery. Jay allows a brief smile each time a new coach comes on to face him, but when the whistle blows to begin the one-on-ones, he begins scrapping fiercely. Several times during the hour of almost nonstop work, Jay and the coaches go tumbling out of their designated area on the mats, cutting out teammates’ legs from underneath them. But Jay won’t give it up, and he won’t come off for a break. Longtime Iowa wrestling fans would find that scenario familiar: It is, the legend goes, how Gable used to get ready for his matches, by basically wrestling everyone in the room until there was no one left to go against him. Jay isn’t in Gable’s league, of course. No one is. On the other hand, Dan Gable never had a chance to win four straight high school championships. When the practice finally ends, Jay quickly dresses and comes out to see his father, and there are no hellos exchanged. Instead, it is as though the two have resumed a conversation they were just having a minute before. “So how much money have you got?” Jay says. “Sure, now I’m the bank,” Jim jokes, but he is already reaching into his wallet. Jim pulls out a $10 bill and hands it to Jay, who takes it between his thumb and forefinger and walks away, holding his new money in the air as though it were an artifact. “He’s already thinking about food,” Jim says. “You’ll want to make a note of that. It’ll come up fairly often.” CHAPTER 2Merely Really GoodThey didn’t grow up together; it only seems that way sometimes. Jay Borschel is, at heart, a city kid; he has grown up either in university towns or the suburbs of Cedar Rapids, where his parents settled when he was four. Dan LeClere, though he knows his way around the city, has spent his life to this point largely on the farm, on land that has been held in the LeClere family name for a century. Jay goes to the big high school in Marion. Dan will graduate from North-Linn High School with a senior class of fifty. They are separated by perhaps a twenty-minute drive, but radically different lives; put the two in a room together and, other than wrestling, you wonder what they’d even have to talk about.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘Yes,’ he frowned, turning the page. It was Oxford now—the matriculation photograph, posed in the stony front quad at Corpus, the pelican on top of the sundial appearing to sit on the head of the lanky, begowned chemist at the centre of the back row. I looked rather anonymous in it and once Rupert had identified me we moved to some colour snaps of a summer picnic at Wytham. There I sat, cross-legged on a rug, shirtless, brown, blue-eyed—perhaps the most beautiful I had ever been or ever would be. ‘That’s you,’ cried Rupert, splodging his forefinger down on my face as if recording his fingerprints for the police. ‘And that’s James! Isn’t he funny?’ ‘Yes, isn’t he a scream.’ James had on his panama hat, was quite drunk and had been caught at an unflattering angle (one I had never seen him from in real life), so that he looked lecherously seedy. ‘And is that Robert Carson um Smith?’ ‘Smith-Carson, actually, but jolly good all the same.’ ‘Was he a homosexual?’ ‘Certainly was.’ ‘I don’t like him.’ ‘No, he wasn’t very nice really. Some people liked him, though. He was great friends with James, you know.’ ‘Is James a homosexual, too?’ ‘You know perfectly well he is.’ ‘Yes, I thought he was, but Mummy said you mustn’t say people were.’ ‘You say what you like, sweetheart; as long as it’s true, of course.’ ‘Of course. Is he a homosexual as well?’ he chimed on, pointing to the remaining person in the picture, the blazered, boatered man-mountain, Ashley Child, a wealthy American Rhodes scholar whose birthday, as far as I could remember, we had been celebrating. ‘A bit hard to say, I’m afraid. I should think so, though.’ ‘I mean,’ Rupert looked up at me cogitatively, ‘almost everyone is homosexual, aren’t they? Boys, I mean.’ ‘I sometimes think so,’ I hedged. ‘Is Grandpa one?’ ‘Good heavens no,’ I protested. ‘Am I one?’ Rupert asked intently. ‘It’s a bit early to say yet, old fellow. But you could be, you know.’ ‘Goody!’ he squealed, banging his heels against the front of the sofa again. ‘Then I can come and live with you.’ ‘Would you like that?’ I asked, my avuncular rather than my homosexual feelings deeply gratified by this. And really Rupert’s cult of the gay, his innocent, optimistic absorption in the subject, delighted me even while its origin and purpose were obscure. I was saved from the sexual analysis of the next set of pictures, the Oscar Wilde Society Ball, by the doorbell ringing. (The dressnote that year had been ‘Slave Trade’, and the spectacle of predominantly straight boys camping it up to the eyeballs would have been confusing to the child’s budding sense of role-play.) It was not Philippa but Gavin who had come. ‘Sorry about this, Will,’ he said. ‘Has he been a frightful bother?’ ‘Not a bit, Gavin. Come in. We were just having a talk about homosexuality.’

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

  GREGORY. (super Ezech. lib. i. Hom. i. 8.) She was touched with the spirit of prophecy at once, both as to the past, present, and future. She knew that Mary had believed the promises of the Angel; she perceived when she gave her the name of mother, that Many was carrying in her womb the Redeemer of mankind; and when she foretold that all things would be accomplished, she saw also what was to follow in the future. 1:4646. And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. AMBROSE. As evil came into the world by a woman, so also is good introduced by women; and so it seems not without meaning, that both Elisabeth prophesies before John, and Mary before the birth of the Lord. But it follows, that as Mary was the greater person, so she uttered the fuller prophecy. BASIL. (in Psalm 33) For the Virgin, with lofty thoughts and deep penetration, contemplates the boundless mystery, the further she advances, magnifying God; And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Athanasius.) As if she said, Marvellous things hath the Lord declared that He will accomplish in my body, but neither shall my soul be unfruitful before God. It becomes me to offer Him the fruit also of my will, for inasmuch as I am obedient to a mighty miracle, am I bound to glorify Him who performs His mighty works in me. ORIGEN. Now if the Lord could neither receive increase or decrease, what is this that Mary speaks of, My soul doth magnify (magnificat) the Lord? But if I consider that the Lord our Saviour is the image of the invisible God, and that the soul is created according to His image, so as to be an image of an image, then I shall see plainly, that as after the manner of those who are accustomed to paint images, each one of us forming his soul after the image of Christ, makes it great or little, base or noble, after the likeness of the original; so when I have made my soul great in thought, word, and deed, the image of God is made great, and the Lord Himself, whose image it is, is magnified in my soul. 1:4747. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. BASIL. (ubi sup.) The first-fruit of the Spirit is peace and joy. Because then the holy Virgin had drunk in all the graces of the Spirit, she rightly adds, And my spirit hath leaped for joy. (exultavit.) She means the same thing, soul and spirit. But the frequent mention of leaping for joy in the Scriptures implies a certain bright and cheerful state of mind in those who are worthy. Hence the Virgin exults in the Lord with an unspeakable springing (and bounding) of the heart for joy, and in the breaking forth into utterance of a noble affection. It follows, in God my Saviour.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiii) But wherefore doth he stand? Because he falleth not, by reason of his humility. A sure ground this to stand upon, Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. Again; He standeth, and heareth Him. So then if he falleth, he heareth Him not. Therefore the friend of the Bridegroom ought to stand and hear, i. e. to abide in the grace which he hath received, and to hear the voice in which he rejoiceth. I rejoice not, he saith, because of my own voice, but because of the Bridegroom’s voice. I rejoice; I in hearing, He in speaking; I am the ear, He the Word. For he who guards the bride or wife of his friend, takes care that she love none else; if he wish to be loved himself in the stead of his friend, and to enjoy her who was entrusted to him, how detestable doth he appear to the whole world? Yet many are the adulterers I see, who would fain possess themselves of the spouse who was bought at so great a price, and who aim by their words at being loved themselves instead of the Bridegroom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 3) Or thus; The expression, which standeth, is not without meaning, but indicates that his part is now over, and that for the future he must stand and listen. This is a transition from the parable to the real subject. For having introduced the figure of a bride and bridegroom, he shews how the marriage is consummated, viz. by word and doctrine. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Rom. 10:17) And since the things he had hoped for had come to pass, he adds, This my joy therefore is fulfilled; i. e. The work which I had to do is finished, and nothing more is left, that I can do. THEOPHYLACT. For which cause I rejoice now, that all men follow Him. For had the bride, i. e. the people, not come forth to meet the Bridegroom, then I, as the friend of the Bridegroom, should have grieved, AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiv. c. 3) Or thus; This my Joy is fulfilled, i. e. my joy at hearing the Bridegroom’s voice. I have my gift; I claim no more, lest I lose that which I have received. He who would rejoice in himself, hath sorrow; but he who would rejoice in the Lord, shall ever rejoice, because God is everlasting. BEDE. He rejoiceth at hearing the Bridegroom’s voice, who knows that he should not rejoice in his own wisdom, but in the wisdom which God giveth him. Whoever in his good works seeketh not his own glory, or praise, or earthly gain, but hath his affections set on heavenly things; this man is the friend of the Bridegroom.

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

  37. And herein is that saving true, One soweth, and another reapeth. 38. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 1) What is the will of the Father He now proceeds to explain: Say ye not, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? THEOPHYLACT. Now ye are expecting a material harvest. But I say unto you, that a spiritual harvest is at hand: Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. He alludes to the Samaritans who are approaching. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 2) He leads them, as his custom is, from low things to high. Fields and harvest here express the great number of souls, which are ready to receive the word. The eyes are both spiritual, and bodily ones, for they saw a great multitude of Samaritans now approaching. This expectant crowd he calls very suitably white fields. For as the corn, when it grows white, is ready for the harvest; so were these ready for salvation. But why does He not say this in direct language? Because by making use in this way of the objects around them, he gave greater vividness and power to His words, and brought the truth home to them; and also that His discourse might be more pleasant, and might sink deeper into their memories. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 32) He was intent now on beginning the work, and hastened to send labourers: And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxiv. 2) Again, He distinguishes earthly from heavenly things, for as above He said of the water, that he who drank of it should never thirst, so here He says, He that reapeth gathereth fruit unto life eternal; adding, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. The Prophets sowed, the Apostles reaped, yet are not the former deprived of their reward. For here a new thing is promised; viz. that both sowers and reapers shall rejoice together. How different this from what we see here. Now he that soweth grieveth because he soweth for others, and he only that reapeth rejoiceth. But in the new state, the sower and reaper share the same wages. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xv. c. 32) The Apostles and Prophets had different labours, corresponding to the difference of times; but both will attain to like joy, and receive together their wages, even eternal life.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  9No headaches; painless breathing; bruises, with all their touchy, indwelling tenderness, mysteriously fading out: I felt well again, whole, and wholesome. I didn’t need the decadent secrecy of Charles and his pals—and as I had left Staines’s house I had thought of putting the whole thing behind me. Why be encumbered with the furtive peccadilloes of the past, and all the courteous artifice of writing them up? I wasn’t playing the same game as that lot. I looked forward to clear July days, days of no secrets, of nothing but exercise and sun, and the company of Phil. I was enthralled, almost breathless, at the very idea of men, the mythological beauty of them running under trees and sunlight in the Avenue or in the long perspectives of Kensington Gardens. But I was pure and concentrated as well. No longer loathing myself I was once again in love, and turning the full beam of my devotion upon Phil. I dreaded somehow to find that he had grown complicated, that my hatefulness of the past few weeks had left a stain on him, or eroded that ingenuousness which struck me almost as a property of his body, residing speechlessly in his palms and wrists, in his strong calves and ridged stomach, in the crisp hair above his cock, in the pumping heart I laid my ear to, the neck I kissed and bit, the glossy, speckled darkness of his pupils in which I looked and looked and saw myself, miniature, as if engraved on a gemstone, looking. But no. He was surprised, relieved—like a child released at last from some unfair and arbitrary penance. But there was no resentment in him—and he had I suppose the further relief of finding me pretty again, with only the knotty broadening of the bridge of my nose and the too American whiteness of my ingenious new tooth to remind him of our little season of misery. Unlike recovery from a cold or a hangover this took me forward, not merely back to the old unthinking well-being. It made me romantically ambitious for sweetness and strength, and for the moment I felt all over some seasonal convulsion, quite exhilarated by that grand illusion, that I could make myself change. It was the return of physical strength—and at just the time when, sitting apprehensively, watching those two stoned boys and that beautiful scarred stitched-up man, I had seen myself, with weird detachment, in the society of corruption: the baron, the butcher, the boozed-up boyfriend, and most corrupt of all the photographer.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxix. 2) And see; the very argument by which they thought to have overthrown Christ, To whom, thou barest witness, he turns against them; Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ; as if he said, If ye think my witness true, ye must acknowledge Him more worthy of honour than myself. He adds, But that I was sent before Him; that is to say, I am a servant, and perform the commission of the Father which sent me; my witness is not from favour or partiality; I say that which was given me to say. BEDE. Who art thou then, since thou art not the Christ, and who is He to Whom thou bearest witness? John replies, He is the Bridegroom; I am the friend of the Bridegroom, sent to prepare the Bride for His approach: He that hath the Bride, is the Bridegroom. By the Bride he means the Church, gathered from amongst all nations; a Virgin in purity of heart, in perfection of love, in the bond of peace, in chastity of mind and body; in the unity of the Catholic faith; for in vain is she a virgin in body, who continueth not a virgin in mind. This Bride hath Christ joined unto Himself in marriage, and redeemed with the price of His own Blood. THEOPHYLACT. Christ is the spouse of every soul; the wedlock, wherein they are joined, is baptism; the place of that wedlock is the Church; the pledge of it, remission of sins, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost; the consummation, eternal life; which those who are worthy shall receive. Christ alone is the Bridegroom: all other teachers are but the friends of the Bridegroom, as was the forerunner. The Lord is the giver of good; the rest are the despisers of His gifts. BEDE. His Bride therefore our Lord committed to His friend, i. e. the order of preachers, who should be jealous of her, not for themselves, but for Christ; The friend of the Bridegroom which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiii. c. 12) As if He said, She is not My spouse. But dost thou therefore not rejoice in the marriage? Yea, I rejoice, he saith, because I am the friend of the Bridegroom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxviii. 2) But how doth he who said above, Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose, call himself a friend? As an expression not of equality, but of excess of joy: (for the friend of the Bridegroom is always more rejoiced than the servant,) and also, as a condescension to the weakness of his disciples, who thought that he was pained at Christ’s ascendancy. For he hereby assures them, that so far from being pained, he was right glad that the Bride recognised her Spouse.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Everywhere there were gulls, tame and inquisitive as cats, filling the squares with their cries. Mitko was hungry, and we stopped at a snack stand, a bakery selling cheese pastries and sausages and sweets of various kinds. We stood in the street to eat, a small pedestrian square lined on one side by the opera house, and soon we were accosted by one of these birds, who trotted intently before us, working the hinges of its bill and raising its wings as it cried. Mitko had ordered more food than he could eat, and he threw one of his scraps to this bird, which beat its wings to catch it in midair, tossing it back quickly and repeating its demands. Soon there were four or five of them hopping and calling, so that the air was full of opening doors. They delighted me, and Mitko fed my delight as he fed the birds, to the last scrap, after which he raised his hands in apology for having nothing left. As we continued our walk, Mitko told me stories about the places we passed, here the restaurant he frequented with Julien, here the scene of a nocturnal encounter, here the table outside of a dyuner stand where, drunk and brawling, he fell and struck his mouth, breaking his tooth. When it was dark, he said, he would take me to the thermal baths, pools where despite the cold we could lounge in the water together. And he wanted me to see his home, he said; the next morning we would take the bus to the blokove on the outskirts and I would meet his mother and his grandmother. I was surprised by this; I suppose he wanted to show me off, a foreigner, a teacher at a famous school, though how he would explain our acquaintance I had no idea. Everywhere we went he greeted people by name, shaking their hands, patting their backs like a politician, an unaccountably public man. He gestured toward me in introduction, saying that I was his friend, an American, at which point I nodded politely and waited for the conversation to end. As we walked away from certain of these men, Mitko would lean into me and whisper a suggestion that we might all three have fun together, he could easily arrange it. But I wanted to be alone with Mitko, and I told him this later, back in the room when he suggested he call his friend, the one he called brat mi , who was, he assured me, as eager as Mitko himself for the three of us to meet. We would gather at the hotel, he said, and then go to the hot springs together. It was already early evening, night was falling, he said we could leave soon.

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

  ORIGEN. (tom. xv. in Joan. c. 39–49) How can we consistently give an allegorical meaning to the words, Lift up your eyes, &c. and only a literal one to the words, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? The same principle of interpretation surely must be applied to the latter, that is to the former. The four months represent the four elements, i. e. our natural life; the harvest, the end of the world, when all conflict shall have ceased, and truth shall prevail. The disciples then regard the truth as incomprehensible in our natural state, and look forward to the end of the world for attaining the knowledge of it. But this idea our Lord condemns: Say not ye, there are four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes. In many places of Holy Scripture, we are commanded in the same way to raise the thoughts of our minds, which cling so obstinately to earth. A difficult task this for one who indulges his passions, and lives carnally. Such an one will not see if the fields be white to the harvest. For when are the fields white to the harvest? When the Word of God comes to light up and make fruitful the fields of Scripture. Indeed, all sensible things are as it were fields made white for the harvest, if only reason be at hand to interpret them. We lift up our eyes, and behold the whole universe overspread with the brightness of truth. And he that reapeth those harvests, has a double reward of his reaping; first, his wages; And he that reapeth receiveth wages; meaning his reward in the life to come; secondly, a certain good state of the understanding, which is the fruit of contemplation, And gathereth fruit unto life eternal. The man who thinks out the first principles of any science, is as it were the sower in that science; others taking them up, pursuing them to their results, and engrafting fresh matter upon them, strike out new discoveries, from which posterity reaps a plentiful harvest. And how much more may we perceive this in the art of arts? The seed there is the whole dispensation of the mystery, now revealed, but formerly hidden in darkness; for while men were unfit for the advent of the Word, the fields were not yet white to their eyes, i. e. the legal and prophetical Scriptures were shut up. Moses and the Prophets, who preceded the coming of Christ, were the sowers of this seed; the Apostles who came after Christ and saw His glory were the reapers. They reaped and gathered into barns the deep meaning which lay hid under the prophetic writings; and did in short what those do who succeed to a scientific system which others have discovered, and who with less trouble attain to clearer results than they who originally sowed the seed. But they that sowed and they that reaped shall rejoice together in another world, in which all sorrow and mourning shall be done away. Nay, and have they not rejoiced already? Did not Moses and Elias, the sowers, rejoice with the reapers Peter, James, and John, when they saw the glory of the Son of God at the Transfiguration? Perhaps in, one soweth and another reapeth, one and another may refer simply to those who live under the Law, and those who live under the Gospel. For these may both rejoice together, inasmuch as the same end is laid up for them by one God, through one Christ, in one Holy Spirit.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  It was Jay who had witnessed that scene and said to himself, “That’s me,” and so it was. And in this moment, right in this place, you suddenly realize there is no friction, no antagonists or doubters. They cannot be found inside the Barn. There is only the state of Iowa and its abiding love of the sport—and its true champions. The one thing Jay probably never counted on was the idea that these people might appreciate the moment as much as he would. Go figure. And later, after the ceremonies and the love, after Dan Gable stops by for photographs, and the TV cameras and reporters’ notebooks go away, the Borschels’ extended family, twenty or so in all, heads out to a Bennigan’s near the Linn-Mar team hotel to celebrate. Jay is presented with a poster signed by Cael Sanderson congratulating him on the four titles. Food and drinks are ordered all around. And then Jay, the center of all of this, stands up and says, “Thank you,” and very quietly excuses himself, and hugs all the folks at the table; and he takes his ravaged body back to the hotel and passes out, leaving Jim and Carol and the coaches and their wives and girlfriends to carry on the party by themselves. They sit in the hotel hallway drinking Curt Hynek’s homemade Swisher moonshine; and inside, Jay sleeps, just as happy not to be part of it. Nobody has to tell him it’s a great thing he did, after all. Nobody has to tell him anything, unless perhaps they want to say that they wonder how he’ll do at the next level, with the next challenge. If they want to say that, Jay will listen. CHAPTER 15Making Things GrowThe day always starts at the same location. “We’ll meet at the gas station in Walker,” Brad Bridgewater had said the night before, by way of imparting the complete and total set of directions. Sure enough, all that is needed is to spot the sign that says WALKER while heading north on Troy Mills Road, and then to take that left turn. After a few miles of gently undulating corn fields and cattle pastures, there begin to pop up a few homes and then a few more; and finally, over there on the left-hand side of the road, there appears a little station with a couple of gas pumps and plenty of parking and hanging-around room. There’s a place inside where you can buy chips and soda, fast food, mostly. It is called Hocken’s, after Shannon Hocken’s grandfather, who has owned the place for a long while—decades, really. In one of those signs of the times out in the country, the Hockens have run out of people who want to keep the family business going, and they’re selling. The store and station will be called something else pretty soon, for the first time in most of these kids’ lives.

• From Another Country (1962)

  But Rufus was also a little afraid of him; there was that about him, in spite of his charm, which did not encourage intimacy. He was a great success with women, whom he treated with a large, affectionate contempt, and he was now on his fourth wife. He took Leona and Rufus by the arm and walked them to the edge of the party. “We might have us some real doings if these squares ever get out of here,” he said. “Stick around.” “How does it feel to be respectable?” Rufus grinned. “Shit. I been respectable all my life. It’s these respectable motherfuckers been doing all the dirt. They been stealing the colored folks blind, man. And niggers helping them do it.” He laughed. “You know, every time they give me one of them great big checks I think to myself, they just giving me back a little bit of what they been stealing all these years, you know what I mean?” He clapped Rufus on the back. “See that Little Eva has a good time.” The crowd was already thinning, most of the squares were beginning to drift away. Once they were gone, the party would change character and become very pleasant and quiet and private. The lights would go down, the music become softer, the talk more sporadic and more sincere. Somebody might sing or play the piano. They might swap stories of the laughs they’d had, gigs they’d played, riffs they remembered, or the trouble they’d seen. Somebody might break out with some pot and pass it slowly around, like the pipe of peace. Somebody, curled on a rug in a far corner of the room, would begin to snore. Whoever danced would dance more languorously, holding tight. The shadows of the room would be alive. Toward the very end, as morning and the brutal sounds of the city began their invasion through the wide French doors, somebody would go into the kitchen and break out with some coffee. Then they would raid the icebox and go home. The host and hostess would finally make it between their sheets and stay in bed all day. From time to time Rufus found himself glancing upward at the silver ball in the ceiling, always just failing to find himself and Leona reflected there. “Let’s go out to the balcony,” he said to her. She held out her glass. “Freshen my drink first?” Her eyes were now very bright and mischievous and she looked like a little girl. He walked to the table and poured two very powerful drinks. He went back to her. “Ready?” She took her glass and they stepped through the French doors. “Don’t let Little Eva catch cold!” the host called.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Yet again, in the spirit of Ash-Wednesday, I found that relinquishing hope had released something within me. My love for reading came back in full. Even though I had started to respond to literature again, there had still been something rather dutiful and anxious in my approach. I would read a new novel desperately casting around for a clever thing to say about it that would impress my colleagues. But now that I had been ejected from academia so publicly, I no longer needed to impress anybody. It didn’t matter whether I came up with any brilliant insights or not. When I read a novel or a poem now, I no longer had an ulterior motive; I was no longer trying to use literature to promote myself, but was simply immersing myself in the text for its own sake—as, of course, I should have been doing all along. As a result, I found myself inundated with ideas and with the words to express them. The mind that I had bludgeoned into stupor had been given back to me. Again, I did not reflect upon this much at the time. I simply noted it as an irony. And yet my renewed delight in the written word was a gift and a grace. This too planted a seed of perception. Insight does not always come to order, and there will certainly be no renaissance if you are merely trying to “get” something for yourself. As soon as I stopped trying to exploit my literary skills to advance my career or enhance my reputation, I found that I was opening myself to the text, could lose myself in the beauty of the words and in the wisdom of the writer. It was a kind of ekstasis, an ecstasy that was not an exotic, tranced state of consciousness but, in the literal sense of the word, a going beyond the self. Then, in February 1976, just over a year since the viva that, I thought, had wrecked my life, I received the greatest gift of all, though at first it seemed like another setback.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  We set up a date for the following evening, and his eyes lit up at the sight of my phone, which I pulled out for the first time in his presence to take down his number. He snatched it from me, only after it was in his hand saying Mozhe li , may I, and as I watched him scroll through its various features and screens, I remembered the warning I had been given. But this unease wasn’t enough to dissuade me, and the next afternoon after classes I hurried downtown. We met again at NDK, where I found him in a huddle with three or four other men at the wall farthest from the entrance. They scattered when I appeared, though I didn’t approach them but stood awkwardly at the threshold. Mitko, who had his back to me, turned and smiled, offering me his hand and at the same time directing me out of the room and away from his friends (if they were his friends), leading me toward the plaza above. As we climbed the long staircase, moving away from those rooms that had always seemed too small for him, his frame and voice and friendliness all hemmed in by the damp tile of the walls, I felt, along with the excitement I had anticipated, an entirely unexpected happiness. Kak si , I asked as we walked through the park at NDK, how are you, and he showed me the knuckles of his right hand, which were skinned and raw, the wounds still fresh. He said that he had gotten into a fight with another man down below, though the reasons for it remained unclear to me. I took his hand in mine for a moment, looking at the little wounds that made him at once fierce and damaged, and I imagined how I would salve them, rubbing them with ointment and then pressing them to my lips. But this was a kind of tenderness that had never been part of our encounters and that was especially out of place now, as he reenacted his fight with quick jabs in the air. We walked down Vasil Levski Boulevard, Mitko’s long legs devouring the pavement as I struggled to keep up, and he talked the whole way, only bits of what he said comprehensible to me.

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

  SUPREME PERFECTION AND HAPPINESS IN THE VISION OF GODWe should further understand that delight is engendered by the apprehension of a suitable good. Thus sight rejoices in beautiful colors, and taste in sweet savors. But this delight of the senses can be prevented if the organ is indisposed; the same light that is charming to healthy eyes is annoying to sore eyes. However, since the intellect does not understand by employing a bodily organ, as we showed above, no sorrow mars the delight that consists in the contemplation of truth. Of course, sadness can indirectly attend the mind’s contemplation, when the object of truth is apprehended as harmful. Thus knowledge of truth may cause pleasure in ‘the intellect, while at the same time the object known may engender sorrow in the will, not precisely because the object is known, but because its action is pernicious. God, however, by the very fact that He exists, is truth. Therefore the intellect that sees God cannot but rejoice in the vision of Him. Besides, God is goodness itself, and goodness is the cause of love. Hence God’s goodness must necessarily be loved by all who apprehend it. Although an object that is good may fail to call forth love, or may even be hated, the reason is not that it is apprehended as good, but that it is apprehended as harmful. Consequently in the vision of God, who is goodness and truth itself, there must be love or joyous fruition, no less than comprehension. This accords with Isaiah 66:14: “You shall see and your heart shall rejoice.” CHAPTER 166 CONFIRMATION IN GOOD IN THE BEATIFIC VISIONThis enables us to understand that the soul which sees God—and the same is true of any other spiritual creature—has its will firmly fixed in Him, so that it can never turn to what is opposed to Him. For, since the object of the will is the good, the will cannot incline to anything whatever unless it exhibits some aspect of good. Any particular good may be wanting in some perfection, which the knower is then free to seek in another quarter. Therefore the will of him who beholds some particular good need not rest content with its possession, but may search farther afield beyond its orbit. But God, who is universal good and very goodness itself, is not lacking in any good that may be sought elsewhere, as was shown above. And so those who enjoy the vision of God’s essence cannot turn their will from Him, but must rather desire all things in subordination to Him.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He began playing a game, turning his head quickly and repeatedly from right to left, focusing his sight on an object and following it as we passed; it was something I had done, too, staring out of windows on long trips in the car. Poor boy, I thought, he had nothing at all to do, no toys or books, though perhaps he was too young for books, and with the prospect of many hours to fill. He turned away from the window, facing the back wall, and reached up toward the metal rack where we had placed our luggage. Then, taking the edge of the rack in both hands, he lifted himself up, his right leg striking out for the window, seeking purchase. This woke his grandmother, who grabbed the leg nearest her and tugged on it, saying Dolu , down, saying it again when he dropped to the seat but remained standing. Sit down, she said, you’re bothering these people, they want to read, and it was true that we had stopped reading, having turned to look instead at the two of them; but I didn’t feel bothered, he was more interesting than my book. I’m bored, he said, skuka mi e , it’s a long trip, I want to do something. His grandmother sighed. It’s not so long, she said, other children manage to sit and to be good. I’ll never sit, the boy cried, squaring his shoulders, and he repeated the word never, nikoga , separating each of the syllables, throwing them like little punches in the air. I laughed, I couldn’t help it, and the man across from me laughed too; even the grandmother smiled, it was too charming to resist. The boy looked surprised at our laughter, as if he had forgotten about us, and then he glanced at each of us in turn with his enormous smile, thrilled with the impression he had made. Only my mother was left out, and she reached urgently across to grip my arm, asking what he had said, wanting to know before the moment passed. And then she smiled too, looking first at the boy and then his grandmother, laying her hands in her lap and settling back against the bench in a peculiar way she had, as if it were all just too much for words. He’s a sweet boy, she said then, looking at the grandmother, who smiled back at her but shook her head, saying she was sorry, she didn’t speak any English. I translated what my mother had said, and the woman looked at me, a little surprised.

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) Fitly too is this woman, who was the first to announce the joy of our Lord’s resurrection, said to have been cured of seven devils, lest any one worthily repenting of his sins should despair of pardon for what he had done, and that it might be shewn that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (Rom. 5:20) SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) Mary brings the news, not now as a woman, but in the person of the Church, so that, as above woman was silent, here as the Church she might bring tidings and speak. There follows, And they when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, believed not. GREGORY. (Hom. in Evan. xxix.) That the disciples were slow in believing our Lord’s resurrection was not so much a weakness of theirs as it is our strength. For the resurrection itself through their doubts was manifested by many proofs; and whilst we read and acknowledge them, what do we but become firmer through their doubting? There follows, After this he appeared in another form unto two of them as they walked and went to a farm house. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Luke relates the whole story respecting these two, one of whom was Cleophas, but Mark here touches but slightly upon it. That village of which Luke speaks may without absurdity be supposed to be what is here called a farm house, and indeed in some Greek manuscripts it is called the country. But by this name are understood not only villages, but also boroughs and country towns, because they are without the city, which is the head and mother of all the rest. That which Mark expresses by the Lord’s appearance in another form, is what Luke means by saying that their eyes were holden that they could not know him. For something was upon their eyes, which was allowed to remain there, until the breaking of bread. SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) But let no one suppose that Christ changed the form of His face by His resurrection, but the form is changed when of mortal it becomes immortal, so that this means that He gained a glorious countenance, not that He lost the substance of His countenance. But He was seen of two; because faith in the resurrection is to be preached and shewn to two people, that is, the Gentiles and the Jews. There follows, And they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them. How are we to understand the words of Mark compared with the account of Luke, that they then said, The Lord hath risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon, (Luke 24:34) if we do not suppose that there were some there who would not believe? THEOPHYLACT. For he does not say this of the eleven, but of some others, whom He calls the residue.

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

  922. Then at (705) he proves the same thing in this way: Every moral virtue consists in some delight or sadness—for a person is not just unless he enjoys just works and becomes sad at their contrary; and the same is true of the other moral virtues. The reason for this is that the activity of every appetitive power, in which moral virtue exists, is terminated at delight or sadness, since delight follows upon the attainment of what the appetite seeks and sorrow upon the attainment of what the appetite dislikes. Hence, a person who desires or hopes is delighted when he attains what he desires or hopes. In like manner, the angry person is delighted, when he punishes. On the other hand, one who fears or hates something becomes sad when the evil he sought to escape occurs. But all sadness and delight are caused either by the actual presence of a thing or by the memory of a past thing or by hope of a future thing. Therefore, if delight concerns an actual present thing, the cause of this delight is a sense, for an agreeable thing does not delight unless it be sensed. Likewise, if the delight is based on memory or on hope, it proceeds from a sense, as when we remember sense pleasures we experienced in the past, or ones we hope to experience in the future. From which it is clear that delight and sadness are based on the soul ’ s sensitive part, in which alteration occurs, as was said above. If, therefore, delight and sadness are involved in moral virtue and moral vice and it is possible to undergo alteration in respect of delight and sadness, then it follows that the reception and loss of virtue and vice are consequent upon some alteration. It is significant that he said the whole of moral virtue consists in delights and sadnesses, in order to distinguish it from intellectual virtues, which also have their own delight. But that delight is not according to sense. Consequently, it has no contrary, nor can there be alteration in respect to it, except in a metaphorical sense. 923. Then at (706) he shows that alteration is not found in the intellectual part of the soul. First he proves this in general; Secondly, more in detail, at 924.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  We kept laughing, with our backs in the dirt and our legs still hooked through the swings, and I felt the same happiness mixed with fear, as though I were being offered a nourishment that might, now I had tasted it, be denied. Finally we stopped laughing, we rose and brushed the dirt from our clothes. We had been walking for hours when we got back to my father’s house, and as we slid beneath the door again we complained that our feet and our legs hurt, and K. said his back hurt as well. We were both exhausted and we fell gratefully onto the bed in the main room; it was a waterbed and we laughed again as we fell onto it, it knocked us up and down and we grabbed on both to the frame and to each other to steady ourselves. We managed to find our balance and keep the mattress still, or not quite still exactly, even turning our heads made it wobble, but though we were tired neither of us was in the mood to sleep. We lay beside each other, as always endlessly talking, and then K. complained about his back again, asking if I would rub it for him. He rolled over to give me access but it was impossible on the bed, when I applied my weight the mattress just gave way beneath him, he said he didn’t feel anything, and so he got up and sat down on the wooden frame, placing his feet on the ground and turning his back to me. But he still wasn’t comfortable, he asked me to reach beneath his shirt and rub the skin itself, and I did, I gripped his shoulders and kneaded them, I applied pressure until he hissed and then I eased off. I worked his neck and down the column of his spine, the muscles bunched on either side, and maybe for the first time in our friendship our constant chatter had ceased. I had never touched anyone in that way before, I wanted to keep touching him, and I was dismayed when K. shifted his weight, I thought he had had enough and was getting up. But instead he began to lean back, so slowly that I was confused at first and resisted him, pressing my hands more firmly against his back; it was only when he insisted that I understood and allowed him to lean into me, as he pressed farther leaning back in turn, so that we fell slowly backward until we were lying on the bed again, I on the bed and K. on me. I hadn’t taken my hands out from under his shirt, I had reached around him as he lay back, and now I held him in an embrace that if he didn’t return he didn’t reject, either, he received it, he let his head fall back against my chest and we lay like that for a while.