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 H Is for Hawk (2014)

  An hour later all is calm and companionable. We’re watching television. The hawk balances evenly on the balls of her feet, mesmerised by the flickering screen. Tiny white wisps of down still attached to the finials of her scapular feathers wave in the draught from the hall. Then, without warning, she bursts from my fist in a whirlwind of a bate. Papers fly. Christina flinches. Shit, I think. I should hood her, let her rest. This is too much. But I am wrong. Fear did not engender this bate. Frustration did. She picks at her jesses in displaced fury, then tears at the meat beneath her toes. She is hungry. The food is a wonderful discovery. She is a delicate, decisive gastronome. She picks, and bites, and swallows, and squeaks in happiness, and bites and swallows again. I am thrilled. But also indignant. This moment was to have been born of solitude and meditative darkness. Not this. Not daylight with another person in the room and ’Allo ’Allo! on the television. Not in the presence of comedy Nazis and a soundtrack about giant sausages and the occupation of France. She narrows her eyes with pleasure, bristles around the nose, and her feathers soften into loose falls of ochre and cream. ‘Has she done that before?’ asks Christina. ‘No,’ I say. ‘This is the first time.’ Laughter from the television audience as an SS officer dressed as a woman hoves into view and the hawk finishes eating, lifts herself into a vast, frothy mop of feathers, holds them there for an instant and shakes them all back into place. A rouse. It is a sign of contentment. She has not roused before.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  Which is, as James 2:17 says, dead faith. No, to live out the abundance we’re promised in John 10:10, we must have equal parts of both ingredients: surrender and obedience, obedience and surrender. We go where God says to go. We stay when God says to stay. We lean in when God whispers our name. We serve when He asks us to serve. You know, we tend to glamorize Jesus’s earthly ministry, as though every moment of His existence here was star studded with excitement and stimulation. Yes, there were definitely noteworthy occasions throughout those three years. A scene involving bread and fish comes to mind. Sometimes our service gets noticed. Sometimes it’s more public and people will praise us for it, like in the case of many of Jesus’s miracles and healings. But sometimes, service goes unseen. It’s found in a charitable conversation, or in a shared meal. Much of Jesus’s life here was spent sitting with a small group in a small room over a simple meal, talking about forgiveness and about grace, and spent noticing the hurting and serving the poor. Nothing flashy. Nothing “like”-able. Nothing that would lead the evening news. Just ordinary life with the One who was constantly bending down to meet the needs of people. So we wipe breakfast tables and speak kindly of someone who’s being criticized and write thank-you notes and build spreadsheets and take a stand against injustices and make coffee and apologize for what we said and send emails and hug a sobbing teenage daughter and change diapers and reach out to a client and teach a preschooler how to tie his shoes. We do all these things and a bajillion more—all because God prompted us to. And as we build the spreadsheet for the glory of God, as we wipe the table in service to God and our people, we don’t have quite as much time for ourselves. It’s the act of surrender. It’s the choice of obedience. It’s the joy of self-forgetfulness. We need to become excellent at being self-forgetful. But it’s difficult to forget big things, especially ourselves. So we shift our gaze. See, there’s a greater plan for service in our lives, and this is it. We interrupt the spiral of self and the pattern of complacency when we lift our gaze off of ourselves, fix our eyes on Jesus, and run the race set before us. What race are you running? Are you even on the track? Are you standing still? Are you gazing at your feet? Where are you in this? But let me pull you in close and tell you that when you start taking risks for the kingdom of God and running your guts out, Satan will do everything in his power to discourage you. The devil delights in distracting us from worship, from running our races, because he knows that living out our purpose here is a direct result of our love for God, our wholehearted focus on Him.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I stop again. I inch across the carpet until I reach that hair-fine juncture where any movement nearer will make her bate from the perch. Breathing as carefully as if I were about to take an extravagantly long rifle-shot, I slowly – so slowly – extend my garnished fist towards her. I can almost taste the hawk’s indecision; the air is thick with it. But – joy! – she is looking at the food in front of her. She leans forward as if to pick it from the glove, but then something inside her snaps. With an awful clang of the metal ring of the perch against its steel base, she bates away from me. Damn. I take her up onto the glove for a few mouthfuls of food. When she is settled back on her perch, we play the game again. Flick. Hop. Flick. She’s solved the puzzle of where the food is coming from and some part of her is reconsidering my place in her world. She watches me intently as I inch towards her and again extend the garnished glove. She leans across and snaps up my gift of steak. My heart leaps. She takes another piece, and then another, smacking her glossy black chops. As I sit there happily feeding titbits to the hawk, her name drops into my head. Mabel. From amabilis, meaning loveable, or dear. An old, slightly silly name, an unfashionable name. There is something of the grandmother about it: antimacassars and afternoon teas. There’s a superstition among falconers that a hawk’s ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all. White called his hawk Gos for short, but also awarded him a host of darkly grandiose other names that for years made me roll my eyes in exasperation. Hamlet. Macbeth. Strindberg. Van Gogh. Astur. Baal. Medici. Roderick Dhu. Lord George Gordon. Byron. Odin. Nero. Death. Tarquin. Edgar Allan Poe. Imagine, I used to think, amused and faintly contemptuous. Imagine calling your goshawk any of those things! But now that list just made me sad. My hawk needed a name as far from that awful litany, as far from Death as it could get. ‘Mabel.’ I say the word out loud to her and watch her watching me say it. My mouth shapes the word. ‘Mabel.’ And as I say it, it strikes me that all those people outside the window who shop and walk and cycle and go home and eat and love and sleep and dream – all of them have names. And so do I. ‘Helen,’ I say. How strange it sounds. How very strange. I put another piece of meat on my glove and the hawk leans down and eats.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  What I see is not just winter moving onwards to spring; it is a land filling slowly with spots and lines of beauty. There’s brittle sun out on the hill this lunchtime, and a fresh westerly wind. Mabel’s pupils shrink to opiated pinpricks as I unhood her, both of her eyes narrow with happiness. It is exceptionally clear. The red flag over the range cracks with the wind and the sound of distant rifles; the radio mast on the horizon looks like an ink-drawing over a wash of shadows and lines and bolts of land rippling up to the chalk hills before me. We walk up the track. From the top I can look down and see the whole of Cambridge. The light today is beguiling. The rooftops and spires seem within a hand’s grasp; a chess-set town glittering among bare trees, as if I could pick up the brute tower of the university library and move it six places north, set it down somewhere else. From here, the city is mild and small, and looks all of a piece with the landscape around it. The beauty of a vantage like this is that it obscures the roads and walls with trees, makes Cambridge a miniature playset of forest-set blocks and spires. These days, when I go into town, I’m increasingly finding excuses to park my car in the multi-storey car park, because from the open-air fourth floor I can stare at these fields. They run like a backbone across the horizon, scratched with copse-lines and damped with cloud-shadow. A strange complication arises when I look at them. Something of a doubling. Leaning out over the car-park rail, I feel myself standing on the distant hill. There’s a terrible strength to this intuition. It’s almost as if my soul really is up there, several miles away, standing on thistly clay watching my soul-less self standing in the car park, with diesel and concrete in her nose and anti-skid asphalt under her feet. With the car-park self thinking if she looked very, very hard, perhaps through binoculars, she might see herself up there. I feel I might be up there, because now the hill is home. I know it intimately. Every hedgerow, every track through dry grass where the hares cut across field-boundaries, each discarded piece of rusted machinery, every earth and warren and tree. By the road, half an acre of fenced-off mud, scaled with tyre-tracks and water reflecting pieces of sky. Wagtails, pallets, tractors, a broken silo on its side like a fallen rocket stage.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  She turns, and Mabel bursts towards me, dragging the creance behind her, flying so low her wing-tips almost brush the turf. With each deep wingbeat her body flexes and swings but her eyes and head are perfectly, gyroscopically, still, fixed and focused on my glove. The silvered undersides of her wings flash as she spreads them wide, her tail flares, she brings her feet up to strike and she hits the glove feet-first like a kickboxer . ‘Was that OK?’ shouts Christina. I give her a thumbs-up, and she responds the same way: for a moment we are two traffic controllers on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier . We do it again. And again. The next day brings heavy rain so we fly her loose between us in the front room of my house, back and forth from fist to fist, over the rug, past the mirror , under the light, wings sending up draughts that leave the lampshade swinging wildly. By the fourth day the hawk is flying twenty-five yards to me, will come without hesitation from the ground, from Christina’s fist, from tree branches, from the roof of the pavilion. ‘Thank you so much for your help,’ I tell her as we walk from the field . ‘You know, I think we’re nearly there. Once she flies a full fifty yards I’ll let her loose.’ The thought brings a squirmy, high-pitched joy. I mustn’t rush. I cannot wait . I had called so many hawks before, but calling Mabel was different. I stood there, raised my arm, and whistled the whistle that meant, Please come. This is where you want to be. Fly to me. Ignore the towering clouds, the wind that pushes the trees behind you. Fix yourself on me and fly between where you are and where I am . And I’d hear my heart beating. And I’d see the hawk crouch and fly. I’d see her drop from the perch, speed towards me, and my heart would be in my mouth. Though she was still on the creance, I feared the faltering. I feared the veering off, the sudden fright, the hawk flying away. But the beating wings brought her straight to me, and the thump of her gripping talons on the glove was a miracle. It was always a miracle. I choose to be here , it meant. I eschew the air, the woods, the fields . There was nothing that was such a salve to my grieving heart as the hawk returning.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The thought brings a squirmy, high-pitched joy. I mustn’t rush. I cannot wait. I had called so many hawks before, but calling Mabel was different. I stood there, raised my arm, and whistled the whistle that meant, Please come. This is where you want to be. Fly to me. Ignore the towering clouds, the wind that pushes the trees behind you. Fix yourself on me and fly between where you are and where I am. And I’d hear my heart beating. And I’d see the hawk crouch and fly. I’d see her drop from the perch, speed towards me, and my heart would be in my mouth. Though she was still on the creance, I feared the faltering. I feared the veering off, the sudden fright, the hawk flying away. But the beating wings brought her straight to me, and the thump of her gripping talons on the glove was a miracle. It was always a miracle. I choose to be here, it meant. I eschew the air, the woods, the fields. There was nothing that was such a salve to my grieving heart as the hawk returning. But it was hard, now, to distinguish between my heart and the hawk at all. When she sat twenty yards across the pitch part of me sat there too, as if someone had taken my heart and moved it that little distance. It reminded me of Philip Pullman’s children’s fantasy series His Dark Materials, in which each person has a daemon, an animal that is a visible manifestation of their soul and accompanies them everywhere. When people are separated from their daemons they feel pain. This was a universe very close to mine. I felt incomplete unless the hawk was sitting on my hand: we were parts of each other. Grief and the hawk had conspired to this strangeness. I trusted she would fly to me as simply and completely as I trusted gravity would make things fall. And so entrenched was this sense that the hawk flying to me was part of the workings of the world that when things went wrong, the world went wrong with it. She’d left Christina’s fist with all the joy and certainty in the world. I watched her approach and waited with happy anticipation for the solid thwack of her landing on my glove. But it did not come. Instead, she snatched at the food in my fist with one down-dropped taloned foot, and kept flying, fast, out and away from me.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A line, frequently appended, ran, finito libro, sit laus et gloria Christo. "The book is finished. Praise and honor be to Christ." The joy authors often feel at the completion of their writings was felt by a scribe when he wrote, libro completo, saltat scriptor pede leto. "Now the book is done, the scribe dances with glad foot." Another piously expressed his feelings when he wrote, dentur pro penna scriptori caelica regna. "May the heavenly reward be given to the scribe for his work with the quill."1235 The pleasures of converse with books in the quiet of a library are thus attractively set forth by a mediaeval theologian, left alone in the convent when the other monks had gone off for recreation: — "Our house is empty save only myself and the rats and mice who nibble in solitary hunger. There is no voice in the hall, no footstep on the stairs .... I sit here with no company but books, dipping into dainty honeycombs of literature. All minds in the world’s literature are concentrated in a library. This is the pinnacle of the temple from which we may see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. I keep Egypt and the Holy Land in the closet next to the window. On the side of them are Athens and the empire of Rome. Never was such an army mustered as I have here. No general ever had such soldiers as I have. No kingdom ever had half such illustrious subjects as mine or subjects half as well disciplined. I can put my haughtiest subjects up or down as it pleases me .... I call Plato and he answers "here,"—a noble and sturdy soldier; "Aristotle," "here,"—a host in himself. Demosthenes, Pliny, Cicero, Tacitus, Caesar. "Here," they answer, and they smile at me in their immortality of youth. Modest all, they never speak unless spoken to. Bountiful all, they never refuse to answer. And they are all at peace together .... All the world is around me, all that ever stirred human hearts or fired the imagination is harmlessly here. My library cases are the avenues of time. Ages have wrought, generations grown, and all their blossoms are cast down here. It is the garden of immortal fruits without dog or dragon." § 90. The Universities. Literature: Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by H. Denifle, O. P. and A. Chatelain, adjunct librarian of the Sorbonne, 4 vols. Paris, 1889–1897. This magnificent work gives the documents bearing on the origin, organization, customs, and rules of the University of Paris from 1200–1452; and forms one of the most valuable recent contributions to the study of the Middle Ages.—Auctarium Chartularii Univ. Paris., ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, 2 vols. Paris, 1893–1897. It gives the documents bearing on the Hist. of the English "nation" in Paris from 1393–1466.—Denifle: Urkunden zur Gesch. der mittelalt. Universitäten, in Archiv für Lit.- und Kirchengesch., V. 167 sqq., 1889.—Engl. trans. of the charter of Fred.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  It had allowed me to unite the twin parts of my soul, my identity as a Native person and my faith as a disciple of Jesus. Without the voice and the blessing of the elders, I could never have been ordained. That ordination took place at Wakpala, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. It was attended by many Native clergy and laity, by Traditional people as well as Christians. It included a blessing for me not only under the hand of my bishop who ordained me a priest in the church, but also by the sacred pipe, the living symbol of spiritual tradition for Native American people for centuries. The ceremony symbolized the healing. It was the two parts of me being drawn together in a sacred way. It was also a sign that Christianity and Native tradition could be lived together with integrity. I was not the only person at that service to understand this hopeful message. In fact, within a short time after my ordination a door opened for me to take this message to a different level. I was invited to join the faculty at a major seminary. I began to teach what the voice had brought me to understand. I began to teach Christian theology as it emerges from Native American tradition. I claimed that tradition in a new way; I described it as Native America’s Old Testament. When I first began teaching on the graduate level in the early 1980s I used the term Old Testament to identify the theological nature of Native tradition. The identification was a shorthand way of placing traditional Native American religious teachings into a Christian context, i.e., that these teachings can be seen in a direct relationship to the New Testament in the same way that Christians understand the tradition of ancient Israel. In my classes in those days I would tell students that as a Native American Christian, I had my feet grounded in the Old Testament of my ancestors, with the Old Testament of Israel in one hand and the New Testament of Christians in the other. The image was accurate as a symbol for how my theology had shifted after the voice helped me to find integrity in the different working parts of my spiritual life. My scholarship was based on how these three testaments engaged one another. I came to understand that the experience of ancient Israel and the experience of Native America were similar. They were traditions that encompassed a covenant relationship with God. Both ancient covenants were crucial sources for interpreting the New Testament theologically. Over time I dropped the use of “old” to refer to these testaments. They are both contemporary living covenants that have their own integrity. Therefore, I speak of the Hebrew Covenant and the Native Covenant to identify these separate, but related traditions. When treated with mutual respect, they can be seen to convey a very similar experience.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Maori. Clothing is super important to me. My family has a long relationship to clothing in that my paternal grandmother was a seamstress, and my paternal grandfather was a haberdasher. My maternal grandmother, also a sun in Taurus like me, was an avid shopper. Like a lot of African American folks, it was always important for my family to be “clean” and “cool.” I have been obsessed with clothing and adornment in some regard since I can remember. One of my earliest memories—and this is a bit contested with my mother—is of me announcing, around five years old, that my mother was “fired” and no longer able to pick out my outfits. amb. Precocious. Maori. I also remember keeping a daily journal in second grade at school in which I drew my outfit each day rather than write text. The summer before eighth grade, I got a part-time job just so I could buy clothes. I was overjoyed when I finally turned sixteen and could legally work at the Gap! In high school, for special events like prom or homecoming, I would often sketch out my dream outfit as a kind of vision board, and then I would go out and find it. One of my favorites is from tenth-grade homecoming when I wore a silver slip dress [and] silver platform sneakers and had my hair in bantu knots. That entire outfit had been an idea in my head first. I have been torn in my relationship to clothing, professionally, since high school, always feeling like I was “smart” and should do something that required more analysis or would help people. I am often returning to fashion under secret cover. Immediately after I’d finished my undergraduate BA in history, I applied to a BFA program in fashion design at Otis but then decided not to go. Then, in grad school studying Film, I found myself taking a ton of extracurricular coursework in costume design, and then eventually I pursued a second MFA in costume design at CalArts (which I also didn’t finish). My close friends know I’m obsessed, and I have a lovely collection of exhibition catalogs from museum fashion shows—which are my favorite kind of show. Have I answered this question? amb. Yes, beautifully! You know, you changed my relationship to clothes. I feel like I’d flailed about in the hit-or-miss realm for many years, certain there was nothing out there for me due to my size. Now I get dressed in what I think of as happy style, adorning myself until I feel joy. You told me things like accessorize to really show my personality, have high-quality basics that I felt great in, and great shoes, great boots. Can you share with readers some of the guidelines you offer for constructing a wardrobe that thrills and delights the wearer and the world? Maori. That means a lot for you to say. I remember well our conversations around getting dressed. I always feel joy when I see you.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  The day we got back from Mara, Auma and I received word that Roy had arrived, a week earlier than expected. He had suddenly appeared in Kariakor with a suitcase in hand, saying that he’d felt restless waiting around in D.C. and had managed to talk his way onto an earlier flight. The family was thrilled by his arrival and had held off on a big feast only until Auma and I returned. Bernard, who brought us the news, said that we were expected soon; he fidgeted as he spoke, as if every minute away from our eldest brother were a dereliction of duty. But Auma, still stiff from sleeping in tents for the past two days, insisted on taking the time for a bath. “Don’t worry,” she said to Bernard. “Roy just likes to make everything seem so dramatic.” Jane’s apartment was in a hubbub when we arrived. In the kitchen, the women were cleaning collards and yams, chopping chicken and stirring ugali. In the living room, younger children set the table or served sodas to the adults. And at the center of this rush sat Roy, his legs spread out in front of him, his arms flung along the back of the sofa, nodding with approval. He waved us over and offered us each a hug. Auma, who hadn’t seen Roy since he’d moved to the States, stepped back to get a better look. “You’ve become so fat!” she said. “Fat, eh?” Roy laughed. “A man needs a man-sized appetite.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Which reminds me … where’s that other beer?” No sooner had the words fallen from his mouth than Kezia came up with a beer in hand, smiling happily. “Barry,” she said in English, “this is the eldest son. Head of the family.” Another woman whom I had never seen before, plump and heavy-breasted, with bright red lipstick, sidled up beside Roy and put her arm around him. Kezia’s smile subsided, and she drifted back into the kitchen. “Baby,” the woman said to Roy, “do you have the cigarettes?” “Yeah, hold on ….” Roy patted his shirt pockets carefully. “Have you met my brother, Barack? Barack, this is Amy. And you remember Auma.” Roy found the cigarettes and lit one for Amy. Amy took a long drag and leaned forward toward Auma, exhaling round puffs of smoke as she spoke. “Of course I remember Auma. How are you? Let me tell you, you look wonderful! And I like what you’ve done to your hair. Really, it’s so … natural!”

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  To Mochi, my little Siamese cat. No one brings me more peace and happiness than you do. There is nothing like a girl and her cat, and I think we make quite the duo. You will always be my first baby. To my son, Derek—it’s wild to me that I’m writing those words. As I type this with you in my belly at thirty-three weeks pregnant, I have never been more excited to meet a person in my life. I can’t believe that I get to be your mom, and I know you are going to change my heart in ways I can’t even fathom. Something tells me that this will be the best adventure yet. See you soon, earth- side, my little love. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Lauren Cook is a licensed clinical psychologist, keynote speaker, and company consultant. She loves speaking around the country to help create more mentally healthy workplaces and schools. Dr. Cook owns a private practice, Heartship Psychological Services, where she serves individual adults, teens, and couples. Dr. Cook completed her doctorate in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University and has her master’s in marriage and family therapy from the University of Southern California. She has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Bustle, and Medium, among other outlets. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and Siamese cat. To bring Dr. Lauren to your team, visit www.drlaurencook.com. Follow Dr. Lauren on Instagram and Tik Tok at @Dr.LaurenCook. ENDNOTES 1. Side note: In case you’re team James Cameron here and you’re about to say that the doorframe wasn’t buoyant enough for the two of them, I’m proud/ashamed to admit how much time I spent researching this very argument. It turns out that Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of MythBusters tested out this famous scene that has now grown quite contested. What they found is that if Rose had placed her life jacket under the doorframe, it would in fact have been buoyant enough to support both her and Jack. But honestly, who would think to do that when they’re suffering from hypothermia and in the wake of a traumatic experience? 2. “Suicide Statistics,” American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/. 3. “Opioid facts and statistics,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, December 16, 2022, https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/statistics/index.html. 4. “Marriage and Divorce,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 25, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm. 5. H. H. Lai, A. Rawal, B. Shen, and J. Vetter, “The Relationship Between Anxiety and Overactive Bladder or Urinary Incontinence Symptoms in the Clinical Population,” Urology 98 (July 2016): 50–57, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2016.07.013. 6. “How Much of the Ocean Have We Explored?,” National Ocean Service, February 26, 2021, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html#:~:text=Throughout%20history%2C%20the%20ocean%20has,unmapped%2C%20unobserved%2C%20and%20unexplored 7. “Ocean,” National Geographic, May 19, 2022, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ocean. 8. M. F. Glasser and D. C. Van Essen, “Mapping Human Cortical Areas In Vivo Based on Myelin Content as Revealed by T1-and T2-Weighted MRI,” Journal of Neuroscience 31, no. 32 (2011): 11597–616, https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2180-11.2011. 9. R. C. Kessler, N. A. Sampson, P.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Zeituni shook her head and laughed. “Well now … no one treated your grandfather this way, not even Barack. I was sure now that for this thing Barack must be beaten severely. For a long time, your grandfather said nothing. He just sat there, watching his son. Then, like an elephant, he shouted out even louder than Barack. ‘Woman! Come here!’ And right away my mum, the one you call Granny, rushed in from her own hut, where she had been mending clothes. She asked why everyone was shouting, and your grandfather stood up and held out his hand. My mum shook her head and accused your grandfather of trying to make a fool of her, but the old man was so determined that soon all four of them were dancing in the hut, the two men looking very serious, the women looking at each other as if now they were sure that their husbands were crazy.” We all laughed at the story, and Roy ordered another round for everyone. I started to ask Zeituni more about our grandfather, but just then the band took up their positions on stage. The group looked a bit ragged at first, but the moment they struck their first note, the place was transformed. Immediately, people began pouring out onto the dance floor, stepping to the soukous beat. Zeituni grabbed my hand, and Roy took Auma’s, and Amy took Bernard’s, and soon we were all dancing into a sweat, arms and hips and rumps swaying softly; tall, ink-black Luos and short, brown Kikuyus, Kamba and Meru and Kalenjin, everyone smiling and shouting and having a ball. Roy threw his arms over his head to do a slow, funky turn around Auma, who was laughing at her brother’s silliness, and right then I saw in my brother’s face the same look I had seen years ago in Toot and Gramps’s apartment back in Hawaii, when the Old Man had first taught me how to dance—that same look of unquestioned freedom. After three or four numbers, Roy and I both relinquished our partners and carried our beers into the open courtyard out back. The cool air tickled my nose, and I felt a bit tipsy. “It’s good to be here,” I said. “You know it. Like a poet.” Roy laughed, sipping his beer. “No, really, I mean it. It’s just good to be here, with you and Auma and everyone. It’s as if we—” Before I could finish, we heard a bottle crash to the floor behind us. I spun around to see two men at the far side of the courtyard pushing another, smaller, man down onto the ground. With one hand, the man on the ground appeared to be covering a cut on his head; with his free arm he was trying to shield himself from the swings of a billy club. I took a step forward, but Roy pulled me back. “Mind your own business, brother,” he whispered. “But—”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I didn’t stop to thank her, but hurried away - shouldering my way through the crush of people, stumbling and cursing and sweating with panic and haste. I passed the Shafts stall again - did not turn my head, this time, to see whether Diana was still at it, with her new boy - but only walked steadily onwards, searching for a glimpse of Florence’s jacket or glittering hair, or Cyril’s sash. At last I left the thickest crowd behind, and found myself in the western half of the park, near the boating-lake. Here, heedless of the speeches and the debates that were taking place within the tents and around the stalls, boys and girls sat in boats, or swam, shrieking and splashing and larking about. Here, too, there were a number of benches; and on one of them - I almost cried out to see it! - sat Florence, with Cyril a little way before her, dipping his hands and the frill of his skirt into the water of the lake. I stood for a moment to get my breath back, to pull off my hat and wipe at my damp brow and temples; then I walked slowly over. Cyril saw me first, and waved and shouted. At his cry Florence looked up and met my gaze, and gave a gulp. She had taken the daisy from her lapel, and was turning it between her fingers. I sat beside her, and placed my arm along the back of the bench so that my hand just brushed her shoulder. ‘I thought,’ I said breathlessly, ‘that I had lost you ...’ She gazed at Cyril. ‘I watched you talking with Kitty.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You said - you said she would never come back.’ She looked desperately sad. ‘I’m sorry, Flo. I’m so sorry! I know it ain’t fair, that she did, and Lilian will never ...’ She turned her head. ‘She really came to - ask you back to her?’ I nodded. Then, ‘Would you care,’ I asked quietly, ‘if I went?’ ‘If you went?’ She swallowed. ‘I thought you’d gone already. I saw a look upon your face ...’ ‘And did you care?’ I said again. She gazed at the flower between her fingers. ‘I made up my mind to leave the park and go home. There seemed nothing to stay for - not even Eleanor Marx! Then I got as far as here and thought, “What would I do at home, with you not there ... ?”’ She gave the daisy another twist, and two or three of its petals fell and clung to the wool of her skirt. I looked once about the field, then turned to face her again, and began to speak to her, low and earnestly, as if I were arguing for my life. ‘Flo,’ I said, ‘you were right, what you said before, about that address I gave with Ralph.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I turned it in my hands, Diana smiling as I did so. ‘It’s for your wrist,’ she said at last.I gazed at her in wonder - people never wore wrist-watches then, it was marvellously exotic and new - then tried to buckle the watch upon my arm. I could not manage it, of course: like so many of the things in Felicity Place, you really needed a maid to do it properly. In the end, Diana fastened it for me; and then we both sat gazing at the little face, the sweeping hand, and listened to the ticking.I said, ‘Diana, it’s the most wonderful thing I ever saw!’, and she pinked, and looked pleased: she was a bitch, but she was human, too.Later, when Maria came to call, I showed her the watch and she nodded and smiled at it, stroking my wrist beneath the leather of the strap. Then she laughed. ‘My dear, the time is wrong! You have it set at seven, and it’s only a quarter-past four!’I looked at the face again, and gave a frown of surprise. I had been wearing it as a kind of bracelet, only: it had not occurred to me to tell the time with it. Now I moved the arms to 4 and 3, for Maria’s sake - but there was really no need, of course, for me ever to wind it at all.The watch was my finest gift; but there was a present, too, from Maria herself: a walking-cane, of ebony, with a tassel at the top and a silver tip. It went very well with my new opera gear; indeed, we made a very striking couple that night, Diana and I, for her costume was of black and white and silver, to match my own. It came from Worth’s: I thought we must look just as if we had stepped out from the pages of a fashion paper. I made sure, when walking, to hold my left arm very straight, so the watch would show.We dined in a room at the Solferino. We dined with Dickie and Maria - Maria brought Satin, her whippet, and fed him dainties from a plate. The waiters had been told it was my birthday, and fussed around me, offering wine. ‘How old is the young gentleman today?’ they asked Diana; and the way they asked it showed they thought me younger than I was.

• From Generation Anxiety: A Millennial and Gen Z Guide to Staying Afloat in an Uncertain World (2023)

  I wanted to reconnect her with her joy—something I feared she had lost somewhere long ago in her childhood. As anxiety often drives us to do, we grow up too quickly and leave behind the folly and the fun because it feels frivolous. It lacks purpose. And that’s exactly why we need it even more. Maybe you too have staved off your joy. We don’t allow for the vulnerability of laughter or heartfelt tears because we believe it leaves us defenseless. We see expression of emotion as weakness instead of a moment of connection. We’ve internalized that adults don’t goof off, cry, or laugh (unless we’re inebriated and therefore less likely to worry about inhibitions). I know that most of us want to reconnect to our joy, though. Part of why nostalgia is so powerful is because it feels like one of the few vessels through which we can tap back into that childlike wonder we miss. It’s why we love watching babies, because they unabashedly have permission to do all the things we wish we could do—laugh, cry, play—without judgment. What if you allowed yourself to loosen the grip, though? What if you didn’t judge yourself for laughing so hard that people turned around because they heard you? What if you danced at a wedding and others noticed you? What if? What if? What if? And to that I say, “So what. So what. So what.” Your anxiety doesn’t need to have a death grip on your joy. Let yourself love what you love without putting parameters on it. LET’S TAKE AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEFINE SOME OF THE WAYS THAT YOU COULD INCORPORATE MORE PLAY INTO YOUR LIFE. TELL ME, WHAT SPARKS YOUR CHILDLIKE JOY? Come back to play. Find those things that you loved to do as a child and rediscover them. Find new things that spark your interest and get lost in them. Not everything needs to be done for productivity’s sake. Not everything needs to have a purpose. Get lost in time and just enjoy something for the pure sake of enjoyment. When you can be free to live out your joy, your anxiety won’t have such a stronghold on your life. Yes, you may still feel anxious sometimes when you’re trying something new. The key is that you’re not letting your anxiety stop you altogether. You’re coming back to that little kid inside who just wants to play. CHAPTER EIGHT SUPPORTING YOUR FELLOW SURFERS FROM AFAR Sometimes you can tell a client hasn’t slept well in a few days. With Jessie, it looked as if she hadn’t slept in a few weeks.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Alana. I love good music, especially really good lyrics. I love to see live music, theater, performance art. I love film. Historically, I love literature, but reading isn’t as accessible to me these days. I love sharing an amazing meal and good conversation with friends. I love sex. I love obsessing about really random things. I love admiring the moon in all its phases. I love making people laugh. amb. This may be too personal, in which case, tell me shut up … but I feel so aware of how Malkia looks at you and sees your beauty and sensuality every single day, allowing everyone else to see you through that lens. It feels like that would be good medicine as your body goes through the challenges of cancer. Is that the case? Alana. Mac makes me feel like a sexy beast, no matter what. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t. It reminds me of my humanity as I manage cancer. It helps me have more compassion and love for myself and others. It makes me feel like a superhero, honestly. amb. Have you read Audre Lorde’s cancer writings? She also seemed to share this commitment to pleasure through transition, and I wonder if she has influenced or encouraged you from the ancestral realm? Alana. I read her Cancer Journals a few months after my diagnosis.85 What struck me the most from it was her commitment to doing whatever it would take to continue her life’s work. I honestly found it to be difficult to relate to—I’m someone who has always struggled with understanding my purpose. Part of me hoped that maybe this cancer diagnosis would activate some secret purpose-filled part of me that was sitting dormant, but that hasn’t really happened. What has happened is that I’ve started a blog and am working on a documentary, and I grow my love for Mac every day. So, in a way, I’ve been able to rekindle some creativity that hasn’t had much attention in many, many years. That feels connected to Audre in some way. amb. What do you wish everyone understood about pleasure? Alana. I think we are on earth, in these humanly bodies, to experience pleasure—among other things. I also do believe the saying “everything in moderation,” with the emphasis on the word “everything.” And, finally, I believe in pleasure as a practice. You can fall out of practice, but life is so much better when you’re exercising your pleasure muscles. 83 Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake (New York: Putnam, 1997), 219.84 Mac is Malkia Cyril, director of the Center for Media Justice and lover extraordinaire.85 Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980).Care as PleasureLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a prolific writer and teacher in the realm of disability justice and care work. Every time we talk she changes something in my foundational sense of myself. When I think of care and pleasure I think of:

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I want there to be a diversity of care tactics. And I want everyone to be able to create wildly intimate, healing relationships where your care needs are present in the room, not crammed in the garbage. I want everyone to have access to this joyful, dangerous, wide-open pleasure, because it’s the vulnerable strength we all deserve. 86 BIPOC: Black, Indigenous and People of Color.Sub-section: The Politics of Wholeness in MovementsTomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone, who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy. —Audre Lorde, “A Burst of Light,” 1988 The Pleasure of Living at the Same Time as Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-CarterIt took years for me to integrate my love of Octavia Butler into the rest of my life—to recognize that my love of her writing and imagination wasn’t a pastime but a future. My love of Beyoncé brings me a similar kind of immense pleasure that actually enhances my wholeness and opens possibilities.87 They are both Black women who shape/d the narratives that held them, and the world around them, though in most ways Beyoncé couldn’t be more different from Octavia. Octavia was awkward whereas Beyoncé is diva, Octavia was private whereas Beyoncé makes most of her work about her intimate relationships, Octavia was delightfully contrarian whereas Beyoncé is, in her own words on Everything Is Love, “everybody type.”88 Beyoncé and I are both Texan-born Virgos with Scorpio moons and Venus in Libra. But that’s where our overlaps end—she is Beyoncé. She’s the queen my anarchic heart continues to choose. I choose her because she works so hard, and she is willing to learn in public, to politicize without rigidity, to exert her will on the public square. Beyoncé is a mama to three children, and we get to see her with them, weaving them, and her husband, into the grand art production of her life. She is a prolific creative force focused on her own transformation, on transcending ceilings and barriers. A pop queen, a culture queen, Beyoncé’s primary public function is to dazzle us with talent. She only has power because we love her. Claiming her publicly, in a way, was a key step in the process of coming out as a pleasure activist. My comrade Karissa Lewis recently reminded me of a moment, at a gathering of Black organizers, the morning after Beyoncé dropped her self-titled album. I stood in front of people I respected and let it show that I was beside myself for this Black woman—and I felt like everyone else should be paying attention to her as well. I knew I liked Beyoncé back in the Destiny’s Child days, but my respect and eventually love grew as she did. I began to appreciate how meticulous she is, how hard she holds and raises her standards, how each of her massive pieces of work is distinct from the last, how she stays learning and innovating, transforming in public.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Really, Nance, sometimes - sometimes I think you must’ve been born quite grown - like Venus in the sea-shell, in the painting ...’She put a finger to the side of her glass, to catch a trickle of sugary rum; then put the finger to her lip. I felt my throat grow even thicker, and my heart give a strange kind of lurch. Then I sniffed, and gazed again at the trousered toms beside the billiard-table.‘To think,’ I said after a second, ‘that I might have worn my moleskins, after all ...’ Florence laughed.We sat sipping at our rums a little longer; more women arrived, and the room became hotter and noisier and thick with smoke. I went to the bar to have our glasses re-filled, and when I walked with them back to our stall I found Annie there, with Ruth and Nora and another girl, a fair-haired, pretty girl, who was introduced to me as Miss Raymond. ‘Miss Raymond works in a print-shop,’ said Annie, and I had to pretend surprise to hear it. When, after half-an-hour or so, she went off to find the lavatory, Annie made us rearrange our places so that she might sit next to her.‘Quick, quick!’ she cried. ‘She’ll be back in a moment! Nancy, over there!’ I found myself placed between Florence and the wall; and for lovely long moments at a time I let the other women talk, and savoured the press of her damson thigh against my own more sober, more slender one. Every time she turned to me I felt her breath upon my cheek, hot and sugary and scented with rum.The evening passed: I began to think that I had never spent a pleasanter one. I gazed at Ruth and Nora, and saw them lean together and laugh. I looked at Annie: she had her hand upon Miss Raymond’s shoulder, her eyes upon her face. I looked at Florence, and she smiled. ‘All right, Venus?’ she said. Her hair had sprung right out of its pins, and was curling about her collar.Then Nora began one of those earnest stories — ‘This girl came into the office today, listen to this ...’ — and I yawned, and looked away from her, towards the billiard players; and was very surprised to find the knot of women there all turned away from their table, and gazing at me. They seemed to be debating me - one nodded, another shook her head, yet another squinted at me, and thumped her billiard cue upon the floor emphatically. I began to grow a little uncomfortable: perhaps - who knew? - I had breached some tommish etiquette, coming here in short hair and a skirt. I looked away; and when I looked again, one of the women had disentangled herself from her neighbours, and was stepping purposefully towards our stall.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  One by one these stories presented themselves to me as the chronicle of a Native American holy man making his vision quests through the course of his lifetime. Each one was different, but each one followed the same sacred pattern of the traditional Native quest, as if the gospel had been written by a Native American author. Jesus was the Messiah of Native America. For me, this was a deep healing. I found many other parts of Native American theology emerging from my reading that afternoon, not only the four vision quests, but other events and characters in the narrative that took on a Native American reality. In the rest of this book I will try to share some thoughts about the four vision quests of Jesus, but before I do, I want to consider the aftermath of this moment of revelation. The experience I had of the voice while sitting quietly reading the Christian scriptures was the moment when what the crow had told me actually happened – the two paths became one. The purpose of the vision quest in Native American culture is not to give one person a private audience with God. It is a tool of transformation, a way to help every person become a more spiritually skilled member of the community. By taking my vision with me into the Dakotas, by trusting what the crow had told me and following the twin paths of my life, I had allowed the vision to become a deeper part of me. I continued my quest because I was alert to the lessons I could learn among Native people. I listened. I learned. I lived. Then the message of the crow was ready to be fulfilled. And yet, in keeping with the nature of the vision quest, the fulfillment was not an end in itself. I had my “eureka” moment, but it was a beginning, not an end. Once I realized that there were four vision quests in the New Testament, the pull of this idea accelerated my desire to learn more. It opened up the Bible to me in a new way. It brought me to a new path of scholarship and service. Only a short while after my discovery, a few of the Lakota elders came to tell me that they thought I should get ordained. They told me that they had been watching me since I had come to live in their community; they had seen how I tried to live; they believed it was time for me to take the step to become a priest. This affirmation came right after the healing I felt when I began to understand the Christian message as an integral part of Native tradition. Up until that point, I had said I would not be ordained because I was too divided in my spirit. Now, the voice had healed me.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  These are a few examples of the many joyful intersections of disability justice, care, and pleasure that I’m really fucking lucky to have in my life. But I know that for most people, the words “care” and “pleasure” can’t even be in the same sentence. We’re all soaking in ableism’s hatred of bodies that have needs, and we’re given a really shitty choice: either have no needs and get to have autonomy, dignity, and control over your life, or admit you need care and lose all of the above. Also in the mix is the fact that some of us come from immigrant, Black, and brown communities and have worked shitty, badly paid caregiving jobs for years, which hasn’t made giving or receiving care uncomplicated. Many of us have been taught that needing care is a weakness we cannot afford and have survived through needing absolutely nothing. A lot of our communities still look down on disability or mental health as weakness and stigma, and we know that if we show ours, we can lose a lot—dates, credibility, social capital, jobs, kids. It’s no wonder I’ve heard many friends say, “I could never show my partner(s) that disability, illness, mental health thing, it’s not sexy, it’s too embarrassing.” For my part, I spent decades curating myself so only my “normal” parts showed—on dates, in the social world—and never showed anyone my damn care needs. I did it because it was the best way I knew to survive. But it also made me deeply believe that those parts were disgusting and unlovable, which meant that I was too. For much of the past decade, I have been part of a disability justice community whose members have dreamed new ways of creating and accepting care as a pleasure, not a chore, and experimented with creating joyful spaces where we care for each other as queer, disabled people of color. I’m proud of the work we’ve done and the impact it has had. I also want to complicate it. There can be nothing more badass than a bunch of crips loving and caring for each other. And: community isn’t utopia, we can fuck each other over or just be too exhausted or mad to be there, and some of us don’t have community at all. Care isn’t always orgasmically pleasurable: people need to be able to get what we need and go to the bathroom whether or not it feels like a dance party. I’ve heard plenty of folks who work with personal care attendants say that they don’t want their care workers to be friends—they want them to be professionals who get paid well and treat them right, where there are labor laws and mutual respect.