Joy

Passages

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

Page 240 of 299 · 20 per page

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  The girls cracked up. “But, then,” Annie added, “my mom was kind of a hippie. So she would tell me to forget all that. She’d say, ‘It’s really important to test-drive a car before you buy it; you don’t just kick the wheels.’” When Brooke was in middle school, her mother gave her a pile of old-school sex-positive books such as Our Bodies, Ourselves. (“They all had these totally seventies covers,” she recalled. “It was hilarious!”) As for Caitlin, whose public high school passed out free condoms, when she was fifteen her mom took her to a “woman-friendly” sex store to buy a vibrator. “She said, ‘I think it’s really important that you get in touch with your own body and sexuality before you start having sex with someone else.’” Neither Caitlin nor Brooke ever imagined saving her virginity for marriage. Until meeting Christina, they’d never met anyone who’d even considered it. “I think my mother’s exact words were ‘Virginity is a patriarchal construct,’” Caitlin said, and laughed. She had intercourse for the first time at sixteen, with a boy whom she would date for the next three years. “I would have actually done it earlier, with a different guy, my sophomore year,” she said, “but he never initiated it. And I’m glad. Because I would have. Not because I wanted to have sex with him, but because I wanted to please him and I wanted to feel important. When I finally did have sex, it was only two months into my relationship, but I felt like I wanted to. It was really empowering to be absolutely sure of that decision and to realize that I hadn’t been ready before but now I definitely was.” Brooke’s first intercourse was younger still, at fifteen. She had imagined it would happen with a boy she cared about—she never used the word love—in the kind of romantic, gauzy setting you’d find in a vintage Summer’s Eve douche commercial: on the edge of a cliff with the Pacific Ocean crashing against the rocks below. “I was probably thinking more about what it would be like to remember it later than the act itself,” she admitted. “Like, how it would sound as a story.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  I didn’t really take it seriously until my agent called me. And then Bronson called me, too, because, you see, there’s going to be a kind of conflict with Happy Hunting Ground. We’re set to go into rehearsal next month, and, who knows? maybe it’ll be a hit. So we’ve got to iron that out.” “But they’re willing to do almost anything to get Eric,” Cass said. “That’s not entirely true,” said Eric, “don’t listen to her. They’re just very interested, that’s all. I don’t believe anything until it happens.” He took a blue handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his face. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Baby,” said Vivaldo, “you’re going to be a star.” He kissed Eric on the forehead. “You son of a bitch.” “Nothing is set,” said Eric, and he looked at Cass. He grinned. “I’m really part of an economy drive. They can get me cheap, you know, and they’ve got almost everybody you ever heard of lined up for the other roles—so my agent explained to me that my name goes below the title—” “But in equal size,” said Cass. “One of those and introducing deals,” said Eric, and laughed. He looked pleased about his good news for the first time. “Well, baby, it looks like you’ve made it now,” said Ida. “Congratulations.” “Your clairvoyant Frenchman,” Cass said, “was right.” “Only what are they going to do about that ante-bellum accent?” asked Vivaldo. “Look,” said Eric, “let’s go see this movie. I speak French in it.” He threw an arm around Vivaldo’s shoulder. “Impeccably.” “Hell,” Vivaldo said, “I don’t really feel like seeing a movie. I’d much rather take you out and get you stinking drunk.” “You’re going to,” said Eric, “as soon as the movie’s over.” And they came, laughing, through the doors just as the French film began. The titles were superimposed over a montage of shots of Paris in the morning: laborers on their bicycles, on their way to work, coming down from the hills of Montmartre, crossing the Place de la Concorde, rolling through the great square before Notre Dame. In great close-ups, the traffic lights flashed on and off, the white batons of the traffic policemen rose and fell; it soon became apparent that one had already picked up the central character and would follow him to his destination; which, if one could judge from the music would be a place of execution. The film was one of those politics, sex, and vengeance dramas the French love to turn out, and it starred one of the great French actors, who had died when this film was completed. So the film, which was not remarkable in itself, held this undeniable necrophilic fascination. Working with this actor, being on the set while this man worked, had been one of the great adventures of Eric’s life.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  “Her modest house [that of the single woman] has been delivered from confusion, and all crying has been banished from her presence. As in a calm harbor, silence rules all within, and another form of detachment more perfect than silence possesses her soul […] What expression could suggest the joy of a soul so disposed […] I do not know what to say, for embarrassment checks me at this point. I cannot understand why almost all mankind, when it could easily and without strain find enjoyment, does not believe this state but enjoys instead fretting and distraction and anxiety!”16 So the Christian inducement to virginity, at least in a certain number of texts, involves praise of an “independent” life, invoking the same advantages that the ancient philosophers claimed for it: no external constraints, “one’s feet” are “nimble, and unfettered,” there are no shackles on one’s ankles.17 No worries about all the appearances that are thought to be the chief benefits of marriage—children, family renown, glory, a future position.18 No more of those passions that trouble the soul when it is agitated by external circumstances—“anger, violence, oaths, insults, hypocrisy.”19 Lastly and above all, the space for the soul to dwell with itself, making it possible to gather one’s thoughts without attachment to external objects: “He whose life is contained in himself either escapes these experiences [those of marriage] altogether or can bear them easily, possessing a collected mind which is not distracted from itself.”20 It is this kind of life that Gregory of Nyssa thought he found in the Prophet Elias or John the Baptist—remaining “apart from all the ordinary events of life” and residing in “a cloudless calm of soul.”21 There is something paradoxical in this description of virginity as a state of tranquility, in the recourse to the philosophical vocabulary of the serene existence. It seems, at first sight, to be in contradiction with what the same authors are apt to say about the unremitting struggles of virginity and its connection with martyrdom.22 It also seems to suggest that there are more dangers, hence more trials, hence more merit, in the existence of married people. This is an objection that Chrysostom himself brings up: “Is it not that success in the midst of such great constraint [that of marriage] means a greater compensation? […] Because you endure greater hardship from marriage.”23 This idea led Clement of Alexandria to give marriage a definite value, making it the rival of virginity in merit.24 But Chrysostom dismisses the objection by stressing that the dangers of marriage cannot be counted toward salvation, since one’s exposure to them was entirely voluntary.25

• From American Swing (2008)

  1164 00:56:53,326 --> 00:56:55,912 YEAH, THE WASTE AND EVERYTHING. NO, THE AMOEBA EATS IT. 1165 00:56:55,912 --> 00:56:59,207 HE HAD SENATORS THERE WITH HIM. HE HAD JUDGES THERE WITH HIM. 1166 00:56:59,207 --> 00:57:02,669 HE HAD LAWYERS THERE WITH HIM. IT WAS NOT A TERRIBLE PLACE TO BE. 1167 00:57:02,669 --> 00:57:05,922 WHEN THAT WATER GOES INTO THE RIVER, YOU CAN ACTUALLY DRINK IT. 1168 00:57:05,922 --> 00:57:09,175 ♪ HAPPINESS! ♪ 1169 00:57:13,388 --> 00:57:16,599 I GOT A PHONE CALL FROM A FRIEND OF MINE WHO SAYS, "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS. 1170 00:57:16,599 --> 00:57:19,519 I JUST HEARD ON THE RADIO THAT THE KING OF SWING 1171 00:57:19,519 --> 00:57:21,312 IS HOME FROM PRISON." 1172 00:57:21,312 --> 00:57:23,273 Man: I JUST WANT TO SAY NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 1173 00:57:23,273 --> 00:57:25,608 THAT I AM MORE THAN PROUD TO PRESENT 1174 00:57:25,608 --> 00:57:29,737 FOR THE FIRST TIME BACK HERE IN 32 MONTHS, 1175 00:57:29,737 --> 00:57:32,740 THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING PLATO'S RETREAT, 1176 00:57:32,740 --> 00:57:35,160 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE OWNER, THE CREATOR 1177 00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:38,413 OF PLATO'S RETREAT, THE KING OF SWING, 1178 00:57:38,413 --> 00:57:42,417 MR. LARRY LEVENSON. COME RIGHT OUT, GANG. 1179 00:57:42,417 --> 00:57:45,920 Man #2: OKAY, LARRY LEVENSON, SKINNIER, HIS DICK IS BIGGER. 1180 00:57:45,920 --> 00:57:49,591 HERE HE IS, LARRY, BACK FROM 32 MONTHS OF HOMOSEXUALITY. 1181 00:57:49,591 --> 00:57:52,927 WHAT'S IT LIKE TO BE HERE AT THE PLACE, THE DREAM YOU CREATED? 1182 00:57:52,927 --> 00:57:55,763 YOU KNOW, THE PERSON WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO ANSWER YOU. 1183 00:57:55,763 --> 00:57:58,725 - YOU'RE SUCH A SLOB. - WE'RE HERE WITH HIS LOVELY MOTHER RENEE. 1184 00:57:58,725 --> 00:58:02,604 RENEE, HOW DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR SON BROKE OUT OF PRISON AND IS HERE AT PLATO'S TODAY? 1185 00:58:02,604 --> 00:58:06,441 I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED SOMETHING LIKE THIS FROM YOU, AL. I'M NOT THE LEAST BIT SURPRISED. 1186 00:58:06,441 --> 00:58:10,278 IT'S NOT TRUE YOU CALLED THE PAROLE BOARD AND SAID, "KEEP THE BASTARD"? 1187 00:58:10,278 --> 00:58:12,822 NO, YOU DID THAT, HONEY. YOU WERE A LITTLE MIXED UP. 1188 00:58:12,822 --> 00:58:15,700 ♪ AND YOU TRY TO SHOW 1189 00:58:15,700 --> 00:58:18,661 ♪ YOUR LOVE FOR ME. 1190 00:58:18,661 --> 00:58:21,039 Larry: I'M THRILLED TO NO END RIGHT NOW 1191 00:58:21,039 --> 00:58:25,168 AS I LOOK AROUND AND SEE YOU FRIENDLY FACES, 1192 00:58:25,168 --> 00:58:29,172 FACES OF OLD FRIENDS AND SOON-TO-BE NEW FRIENDS. 1193 00:58:31,799 --> 00:58:35,136 TO YOU MEMBERS THAT FREQUENT PLATO'S, 1194 00:58:35,136 --> 00:58:39,682 OUR CLUB IS MUCH MORE THAN A SEXUAL HAVEN. 1195 00:58:39,682 --> 00:58:42,143 WE ARE THE CLOSEST THING TO A FAMILY HERE. 1196 00:58:50,985 --> 00:58:54,405 I'M GONNA COME BACK AND I'M GONNA MAKE THIS CLUB BETTER THAN EVER, 1197 00:58:54,405 --> 00:58:57,659 AND WE'RE GONNA HAVE MORE FUN THAN EVER AND IT'S JUST GONNA BE BEAUTIFUL. 1198 00:58:57,659 --> 00:58:59,994 LARRY, WE WELCOME YOU BACK AND CONGRATULATIONS 1199 00:58:59,994 --> 00:59:02,163 ON COMPLETING THE 32-MONTH ALLENWOOD DIET.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Pretty well—under the circumstances.” Her pause suggested that the circumstances were grim. “She had a right fine boy, weighed seven pounds.” She was about to say more; but Ida entered. She was already quite tall, nearly as tall as she was going to be. She, too, had been dealing in hot combs and curling irons, Vivaldo’s later impression that she had been in pigtails was due to the fact that her hair had been curled tightly all over her head. The dress she wore was long and blue and full, of some rustling material which billowed above her long legs. She came into the room, looking only at her brother, with an enormous, childlike smile. He and Rufus stood up. “You see, I got here,” said Rufus, smiling, and he and his sister kissed each other on the cheek. Their mother stood watching them with a proud, frowning smile. “I see you did,” said Ida, moving a little away from him, and laughing. Her delight in seeing her brother was so real that Vivaldo felt a kind of anguish, thinking of his own house, his own sister. “I been wondering if you’d make it—you keep so busy all the time.” She said the last with a wry, proud, grown-up exasperation, as one submitting to the penalties imposed by her brother’s power and glory. She had not looked at Vivaldo, though she was vividly aware of him. But Vivaldo would not exist until Rufus permitted it. He permitted it now, tentatively, with one hand on his sister’s neck. He turned her toward Vivaldo. “I brought a friend of mine along, Vivaldo Moore. This is my sister, Ida.” They shook hands. Her handshake was as brief as her mother’s had been, but stronger. And she looked at Vivaldo differently, as though he were a glamorous stranger, glamorous not only in himself and his color but in his scarcely to-be-imagined relation to her brother. “Well, now, where,” asked Rufus, teasingly, “do you think you’d like to go, young lady?” And he watched her, grinning. But there was a constraint in the room now, too, which had not been there before, which had entered with the girl who would soon be a woman. She stood there like a target and a prize, the natural prey of someone—somewhere—who would soon be on her trail. “Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “Anywhere you-all want to go.” “But you so dressed up—you sure you ain’t ashamed to be seen with us?” He was also dressed up, in his best dark suit and a shirt and tie he had borrowed from Vivaldo. Ida and her mother laughed. “Boy, you stop teasing your sister,” said Mrs. Scott. “Well, go on, get your coat,” Rufus said, “and we’ll make tracks.” “We going far?” “We going far enough for you to have to wear a coat.” “She don’t mean is you going far,” said Mrs. Scott. “She trying to find out where you going and what time you coming back.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  He stood sipping his drink in the bar; they stood on the twilit sidewalk. Eric watched Vivaldo and used these moments to remember him. Vivaldo seemed more radiant than he had ever been, and less boyish. He was still very slim, very lean, but he seemed, somehow, to have more weight. In Eric’s memory, Vivaldo always put one foot down lightly, like a distrustful colt, ready, at any moment, to break and run; but now he stood where he stood, the ground bore him, and his startled, sniffing, maverick quality was gone. Or perhaps not entirely gone: his black eyes darted from face to face as he spoke, as he listened, investigating, weighing, watching, his eyes hiding more than they revealed. The conversation took a more somber turn. One of the musicians had brought up the subject of money—of unions, and, with a gesture toward the spot where Eric stood, of working conditions. Vivaldo’s eyes darkened, his face became still, and he looked briefly down at Ida. She watched the musician who was speaking with a proud, bitter look on her face. “So maybe you better give it another thought, gal,” the musician concluded. “I’ve thought about it,” she said, looking down, touching one of the earrings. Vivaldo took this hand in his, and she looked up at him; he kissed her lightly on the tip of the nose. “Well,” said another musician, wearily, “we better be making it on in.” He turned and entered the bar, saying, “Excuse me, man” to Eric as he passed. Ida whispered something in Vivaldo’s ear; he listened, frowning. His hair fell over his forehead, and he threw his head back, sharply, with a look of annoyance, and saw Eric. For a moment they simply stared at each other. Another musician, entering the bar, passed between them. Then, Vivaldo said, “So there you are. I didn’t really believe you’d make it; I didn’t really believe you’d be back.” “But I’m here,” said Eric, grinning, “now, what do you think of that?” Vivaldo suddenly raised his arms and laughed—and the policeman moved directly behind him, glowering, seeming to wait for an occult go-ahead signal—and covered the space between himself and Eric and threw both arms around him. Eric nearly dropped the glass he was holding, for Vivaldo had thrown him off balance; he grinned up into Vivaldo’s grinning face; and was aware, behind Vivaldo, of Ida, inscrutably watching, and the policeman, waiting. “You fucking red-headed Rebel,” Vivaldo shouted, “you haven’t changed a bit! Christ, I’m glad to see you, I’d no idea I’d be so glad to see you.” He released Eric, and stepped back, oblivious, apparently, to the storm he was creating. He dragged Eric out of the bar, into the street, over to Ida. “Here’s the sonofabitch we’ve been talking about so long, Ida; here’s Eric. He’s the last human being to get out of Alabama.”

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I told her that Zen masters believed mountains “flow,” but that we can’t always perceive the flow with our limited senses, and indeed, in that moment, we did feel as if Fuji was flowing, as if we were riding a wave across the world. Unlike the climb up, the climb down took no effort, and no time. At the bottom I bowed and said good-bye to Sarah and the Easter egg. “Yoroshiku ne.” Nice meeting you. “Where you headed?” Sarah asked. “I think I’m going to stay at the Hakone Inn tonight,” I said. “Well,” she said, “I’m coming with you.” I took a step back. I looked at the boyfriend. He scowled. I realized at last that he wasn’t her boyfriend. Happy Easter. WE SPENT TWO days at the inn, laughing, talking, falling. Beginning. If only this could never end, we said, but of course it had to. I had to go back to Tokyo, to catch a flight home, and Sarah was determined to move on, see the rest of Japan. We made no plans to see each other again. She was a free spirit, she didn’t believe in plans. “Good-bye,” she said. “Hajimemashite,” I said. Lovely meeting you. Hours before I boarded my plane, I stopped at the American Express office. I knew she’d have to stop there, too, at some point, to get money from the Candy Bar People. I left her a note: “You’ve got to fly over Portland to get to the East Coast... why not stop for a visit?” MY FIRST NIGHT home, over dinner, I told my family the good news. I’d met a girl. Then I told them the other good news. I’d saved my company. I turned and looked hard at my twin sisters. They spent half of every day crouched beside the telephone, waiting to pounce on it at the first ring. “Her name is Sarah,” I said. “So if she calls, please... be nice.” WEEKS LATER I came home from running errands and there she was, in my living room, sitting with my mother and sisters. “Surprise,” she said. She’d gotten my note and decided to take me up on my offer. She’d phoned from the airport and my sister Joanne had answered and shown what sisters are for. She promptly drove out to the airport and fetched Sarah. I laughed. We hugged, awkwardly, my mother and sisters watching. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. I got her a jacket from the servants’ quarters and we walked in a light rain to a wooded park nearby. She saw Mount Hood in the distance and agreed that it looked astonishingly like Fuji, which made us both reminisce. I asked where she was staying. “Silly boy,” she said. The second time she’d invited herself into my space. For two weeks she lived in my parents’ guestroom, just like one of the family, which I began to think she might one day be.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  He didn’t falter. He didn’t even slow down. He just kept running, faster and faster, and that blazing show of courage won over the crowd. I think we cheered for him as loudly as we’d cheered for Pre the year before. Entering the final lap, Shorter and Virgin were in front. Penny and I were jumping up and down. “We’re going to get two,” we said, “we’re going to get two!” And then we got three. Shorter and Virgin took first and second, and Bjorklund plunged ahead of Bill Rodgers at the tape to take third. I was covered with sweat. Three Olympians... in Nikes! The next morning, rather than take a victory lap at Hayward, we set up camp at the Nike store. While Johnson and I mingled with customers, Penny manned the silk-screen machine and churned out Nike T-shirts. Her craftsmanship was exquisite; all day long people came in to say they’d seen someone wearing a Nike T-shirt on the street and they just had to have one for themselves. Despite our continual melancholy about Pre, we allowed ourselves to feel joy, because it was becoming clear that Nike was doing more than making a good show. Nike was dominating those trials. Virgin took the 5,000 meters in Nikes. Shorter won the marathon in Nikes. Slowly, in the shop, in the town, we heard people whispering, Nike Nike Nike. We heard our name more than the name of any athlete. Besides Pre. Saturday afternoon, walking into Hayward to visit Bowerman, I heard someone behind me say, “Jeez, Nike is really kicking Adidas’s ass.” It might have been the highlight of the weekend, of the year, followed closely by the Puma sales rep I spotted moments later, leaning against a tree and looking suicidal. Bowerman was there strictly as a spectator, which was strange for him, and us. And yet he was wearing his standard uniform: the ratty sweater, the low ball cap. At one point he formally requested a meeting in a small office under the east grandstand. The office wasn’t really an office, more like a closet, where the groundskeepers stored their rakes and brooms and a few canvas chairs. There was barely room for the coach and Johnson and me, never mind the others invited by the coach: Hollister, and Dennis Vixie, a local podiatrist who worked with Bowerman as a shoe consultant. As we shut the door I noticed Bowerman didn’t look like himself. At Pre’s funeral he’d seemed old. Now he seemed lost. After a minute of small talk he started bellowing. He complained that he wasn’t getting any “respect” anymore from Nike. We’d built him a home lab, and supplied him with a lasting machine, but he said that he was constantly asking in vain for raw materials from Exeter. Johnson looked horrified. “What materials?” he asked. “I ask for shoe uppers and my requests are ignored!” Bowerman said. Johnson turned to Vixie. “I sent you the uppers!” he said.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  The next day I returned to the United States, and one of the first things I did after landing was put fifty dollars in an envelope and airmail it to Fujimoto. On the card I wrote: “For a new bicycle, my friend.” Weeks later an envelope arrived from Fujimoto. My fifty dollars, folded inside a note explaining that he’d asked his superiors if he could keep the money, and they’d said no. There was a PS: “If you send my house, I can keep.” So I did. And thus another life-altering partnership was born. ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1968, Penny and I exchanged our vows before two hundred people at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in downtown Portland, at the same altar where Penny’s parents had been married. It was one year, nearly to the day, after Miss Parks had first walked into my classroom. She was again in the front row, of a sort, only this time I was standing beside her. And she was now Mrs. Knight. Before us stood her uncle, an Episcopal priest from Pasadena, who performed the service. Penny was shaking so much, she couldn’t raise her chin to look him, or me, in the eye. I wasn’t shaking, because I’d cheated. In my breast pocket I had two miniature airplane bottles of whiskey, stashed from my recent trip to Japan. I nipped one just before, and one just after, the ceremony. My best man was Cousin Houser. My lawyer, my wingman. The other groomsmen were Penny’s two brothers, plus a friend from business school, and Cale, who told me moments before the ceremony, “Second time I’ve seen you this nervous.” We laughed, and reminisced, for the millionth time, about that day at Stanford when I’d given my presentation to my entrepreneurship class. Today, I thought, is similar. Once again I’m telling a roomful of people that something is possible, that something can be successful, when in fact I don’t really know. I’m speaking from theory, faith, and bluster, like every groom. And every bride. It would be up to me and Penny to prove the truth of what we said that day. The reception was at the Garden Club of Portland, where society ladies gathered on summer nights to drink daiquiris and trade gossip. The night was warm. The skies threatened rain, but never opened. I danced with Penny. I danced with Dot. I danced with my mother. Before midnight Penny and I said good-bye to all and jumped into my brand-new car, a racy black Cougar. I sped us to the coast, two hours away, where we planned to spend the weekend at her parents’ beach house. Dot called every half hour.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Then everything came out pell-mell and arsey-versy. Pages and pages. Reams of it. None of it belonged in the novel. Nor even in The Book of Perennial Gloom . Reading them over I had the impression of examining an old print: a room in a medieval dwelling, the old woman sitting on the pot, the doctor standing by with red-hot tongs, a mouse creeping towards a piece of cheese in the corner near the crucifix. A ground-floor view, so to speak. A chapter from the history of everlasting misery. Depravity, insomnia, gluttony posing as the three graces. All described in quicksilver, benzine and potassium permanganate. Another day my hands might wander over the keys with the felicity of a Borgia’s murderous paw. Choosing the staccato technique, I would ape the quibblers and quipsters of the Ghibellines. Or put it on, like a saltimbanque performing for a feeble-minded monarch. The next day a quadruped: everything in hoof beats, clots of phlegm, snorts and farts. A stallion (ech!) racing over a frozen lake with torpedoes in his bowels. All bravura, so to say. And then, as when the hurricane abates, it would flow like a song—quietly, evenly, with the steady lustre of magnesium. As if hymning the Bhagavad Gita. A monk in a saffron robe extolling the work of the Omniscient One. No longer a writer. A saint. A saint from the Sanhedrin sent. God bless the author! (Have we a David here?) What a joy it was to write like an organ in the middle of a lake! Bite me, you bed lice! Bite while I have the strength! The Book of Life—Nexus“Val, you’re a dreamer.” “Sure I am. But I’m an active dreamer. There’s a difference.” Then I added: “We’re all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words. Certainly I want to write. But I don’t think it’s the end-all and be-all. How shall I put it? Writing is like the caca that you make in your sleep. Delicious caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then the caca. Life is change, movement, quest… a going forward to meet the unknown, the unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves, ‘I have lived!’ That’s why we have books—so that men may live vicariously. But when the author also lives vicariously—!” She broke in. “When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel that you want to live a thousand lives in one. You’re eternally dissatisfied—with life as it is, with yourself, with just about everything. You’re a Mongol. You belong on the steppes of Central Asia.” “You know,” I said, getting worked up now, “one of the reasons why I feel so disjointed is that there’s a little of everything in me. I can put myself in any period and feel at home in it.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  This view is especially clear in IQH 7.26f., in which the psalmist thanks God for enlightening him. Parallel to this note at the beginning of a hymn is the thanks for not placing the psalm- ist's lot 'in the congregation of Vanity' (IQH 7.34) or for placing his soul 'in the bundle of the living' (IQH 2.20). Knowledge here is double-pronged: one knows, by God's grace, that salvrtion is to be found in the community; and one knows, in retrospect, that it is precisely the gift of knowledge that is essential to effect election (IQH 14.12f.). That is, God's making the member of the sect 'know' is the way in which the member is able to appropriate the election. The knowledge that one is elect, and that one's election has been given effect by knowledge that he is elect, does not, however, exhaust 'knowledge'. After he enters the community his knowledge must still be purified (IQS 1.12). One of the main points of the priestly blessing on entrants is that God will give them wisdom and eternal knowledge (IQS 2.3). The members receive further knowledge concerning the bifurcation of mankind into the elect and the non-elect after they enter (IQS 3.13f.). Further, it is clear that some elements of essential knowledge can be gained only after entry into the sect (IQS 5.11f.; 6.16; Q) 15.5-11). Thus there is no quarrel with placing knowledge first in the 'way of salvation', as long as it is understood that the knowledge thus referred to is that connected with the election of the sectarians. That one must be given knowledge in order to be counted among the elect helps explain, as we have noted, why some in Israel are elect and some not. We have previously noted that members are purified on entry. One of the most basic views of the Qumran community was that all outside the sect were damned. Since one cannot be born into the Qumran covenant, it follows that there must be purification at the time of admission. We may note, again, that purification is repeatedly referred to by the psalmist in terms that indicate that it is connected to election and entry into the sect. This is the case, in fact, in the hymn cited by Bardtke, where the purification is for the purpose of making man holy for God and so that he may jom the community (IQH 11.10-12). On the other hand, purification does not stop there. The member after entry may still sin, and this requires repeated purification, and it is apparently for this that the psalmist prays in IQH 16.11f. This brings us to the only substantial difference between Bardtke's 'way of salvation' and the soteriological pattern which I have described: Bardtke gives no place (as IQH 11.3-14 does not) to the role of the commandments 9] Conclusion and atonement for transgression of them after entry. The 'way' moves directly from purification from sin to participation in the holy community.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady very graciously replied that she was ready to do his desire, so but she might and it were honourable. Then said he, 'Madam, your kinsfolk and all the Bolognese believe and hold you for certain to be dead, wherefore there is no one who looketh for you more at home, and therefore I would have you of your favour be pleased to abide quietly here with my mother till such time as I shall return from Modona, which will be soon. And the reason for which I require you of this is that I purpose to make a dear and solemn present of you to your husband in the presence of the most notable citizens of this place.' The lady, confessing herself beholden to the gentleman and that his request was an honourable one, determined to do as he asked, how much soever she desired to gladden her kinsfolk of her life,[449] and so she promised it to him upon her faith. Hardly had she made an end of her reply, when she felt the time of her delivery to be come and not long after, being lovingly tended of Messer Gentile's mother, she gave birth to a goodly male child, which manifold redoubled his gladness and her own. Messer Gentile took order that all things needful should be forthcoming and that she should be tended as she were his proper wife and presently returned in secret to Modona. There, having served the term of his office and being about to return to Bologna, he took order for the holding of a great and goodly banquet at his house on the morning he was to enter the city, and thereto he bade many gentlemen of the place, amongst whom was Niccoluccio Caccianimico. Accordingly, when he returned and dismounted, he found them all awaiting him, as likewise the lady, fairer and sounder than ever, and her little son in good case, and with inexpressible joy seating his guests at table, he let serve them magnificently with various meats. [Footnote 449: _i.e._ with news of her life.]

• From Another Country (1962)

  The coffee cups, as he thoughtfully washed them, were real, and the water which ran into them, over his heavy, long hands. Sugar and milk were real, and he set them on the table, another reality, and cigarettes were real, and he lit one. Smoke poured from his nostrils and a detail that he needed for his novel, which he had been searching for for months, fell, neatly and vividly, like the tumblers of a lock, into place in his mind. It seemed impossible that he should not have thought of it before: it illuminated, justified, clarified everything. He would work on it later tonight; he thought that perhaps he should make a note of it now; he started toward his work table. The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver at once, stealthily, as though someone were ill or sleeping in the house, and whispered into it, “Hello?” “Hello, Vivaldo. It’s Eric.” “Eric!” He was overjoyed. He looked quickly toward the bathroom door. “How did things go?” “Well. Cass is beautiful, as you know. But life is grim.” “As I know. Has anything been decided?” “Not really, no. She just called me a few minutes ago—I haven’t been home long. Oh, thanks for your note. She thinks that she might go up to New England for a little while, with the kids. Richard hasn’t come home yet.” “Where is he?” “He’s probably out getting drunk.” “Who with?” “Well, Ellis, maybe—” They both halted at the name. The wires hummed. Vivaldo looked at the bathroom door again. “You knew about that, Eric, didn’t you, this morning.” “Knew about what?” He dropped his voice lower, and struggled to say it: “Ida. You knew about Ida and Ellis. Cass told you.” There was silence for a moment. “Yes.” Then, “Who told you?” “Ida.” “Oh. Poor Vivaldo.” After a moment: “But it’s better that way, isn’t it? I didn’t think that I was the one to tell you—especially—well, especially not this morning.” Vivaldo was silent. “Vivaldo—?” “Yes?” “Don’t you think I was right? Are you sore at me?” “Don’t be silly. Never in this world. It’s—much better this way.” He cleared his throat, slowly, deliberately, for he suddenly wanted to weep. “Vivaldo, it’s a terrible time to ask you, I know—but do you think it’s at all likely that you—and Ida—will feel up to coming over to my joint tomorrow night, or the night after?” “What’s up?” “Yves will be here in the morning. I know he’d like to meet my friends.” “That was the cablegram, huh?” “Yes.” “Are you glad, Eric?” “I guess so. Right now, I’m just scared. I don’t know whether to try to sleep—it’s so early, but it feels like midnight—or go to a movie, or what.” “I’d love to go to a movie with you. But—I guess I can’t.” “No.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  But the names I have cited are the ones I shall always revere, the ones I feel forever indebted to. This Unilateral, Multilingual, Sesquipedalian Activity—The Books in My LifeFrom eighteen to twenty-one or twenty-two, the period when the Xerxes Society flourished, it was a continuous round of feasting, drinking, play-acting, music-making (“I am a fine musician, I travel round the world!”), broad farce and tall horseplay. There wasn’t a foreign restaurant in New York which we did not patronize. Chez Bousquet, a French restaurant in the roaring Forties, we were so well liked, the twelve of us, that when they closed the doors the place was ours. (O fiddledee, O fiddledee, O fiddledum-dum-dee!) And all the while I was reading my head off. I can still recall the titles of those books I used to carry about under my arm, no matter where I was headed: Anathema , Chekov’s Short Stories, The Devil’s Dictionary , the complete Rabelais, the Satyricon , Lecky’s History of European Morals, With Walt in Camden , Westermarck’s History of Human Marriage, The Scientific Bases of Optimism, The Riddle of the Universe, The Conquest of Bread , Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe , the Song of Songs by Sudermann, Volpone , and such-like. Shedding tears over the “convulsive beauty” of Francesca da Rimini , memorizing bits of Minna von Barnhelm (just as later, in Paris, I will memorize the whole of Strindberg’s famous letter to Gauguin, as given in Avant et Après) , struggling with Hermann und Dorothea (a gratuitous struggle, because I had wrestled with it for a whole year in school), marveling over the exploits of Benvenuto Cellini, bored with Marco Polo, dazed by Herbert Spencer’s First Principles , fascinated by everything from the hand of Henri Fabre, plugging away at Max Müller’s “philologistica,” moved by the quiet, lyrical charm of Tagore’s poetic prose, studying the great Finnish epic, trying to get through the Mahabharata, dreaming with Olive Schreiner in South Africa, reveling in Shaw’s prefaces, flirting with Molière, Sardou, Scribe, de Maupassant, fighting my way through the Rougon-Macquart series, wading through that useless book of Voltaire’s—Zadig … What a life! Small wonder I never became a merchant tailor. (Yet thrilled to discover that The Merchant Tailor was the title of a well-known Elizabethan play.) At the same time—and is this not more wonderful, more bizarre?—carrying on a kind of “vermouth duckbill” talk with such cronies as George Wright, Bill Dewar, Al Burger, Connie Grimm, Bob Haase, Charlie Sullivan, Bill Wardrop, Georgie Gifford, Becker, Steve Hill, Frank Carroll—all good members of the Xerxes Society. Ah, what was that atrociously naughty play we all went to see one Saturday afternoon in a famous little theatre on Broadway? What a great good time we had, we big boobies! A French play it was, of course , and all the rage.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He pinched her cheek. “Don’t worry.” Cass left the room. Richard grinned at Vivaldo. “If you hadn’t got here today, I swore I was just going to cut you out of my heart forever.” “You knew I’d be here.” He raised his glass. “Congratulations.” Then, “What’s this I hear about all the TV networks just crying for you?” “Don’t exaggerate. There’s just one producer who’s got some project he wants to talk to me about, I don’t even know what it is. But my agent thinks I should see him.” Vivaldo laughed. “Don’t sound so defensive. I like TV.” “You’re a liar. You haven’t even got a TV set.” “Well, that’s just because I’m poor. When I get to be a success like you, I’ll go out and buy me the biggest screen on the market.” He watched Richard’s face and laughed again. “I’m just teasing you.” “Yeah. Ida, see what you can do to civilize this character. He’s a barbarian. “I know,” Ida said, sadly, “but I hardly know what to do about it. Of course,” she added, “if you were to offer me an autographed copy of your book, I might come up with an inspiration.” “It’s a deal,” Richard said. Cass came back with the ice bucket and Richard took it from her and set it on the bar. He mixed his drink. Then he joined them on the other side of the bar and put his arm around Cass’ shoulders. “To the best Saturday we’ve ever had,” he said, and raised his glass. “May there be many more.” He took a large swallow of his drink. “I love you all,” he said. “We love you, too,” said Vivaldo. Cass kissed Richard on the cheek. “Before I go and try to salvage lunch—tell me, just what kind of arrangement did you make with Michael? Just so I’ll know.” “He’s taking a nap. I promised to wake him in time for cocktails. We have to buy him some ginger ale.” “And Paul?” “Oh, Paul. He’ll tear himself away from his cronies in time to come upstairs and get washed and meet the people. Wild horses wouldn’t keep him away.” He turned to Vivaldo. “He’s been bragging about me all over the house.” Cass watched him for a moment. “Very well managed. And now I leave you.” Ida picked up her glass. “Wait a minute. I’m coming with you.” “You don’t have to, Ida. I can do it.” “These men can get drunk, too, if we keep them waiting too long. I’ll help you, we can get it done in no time.” She followed Cass to the doorway. With one foot on the step, she turned. “Now, I’m going to hold you to your promise, Richard. About that book, I mean.” “I’m going to hold you to yours. You’re the one who got the dirty end of this deal.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  What happened to people? why did they suffer so hideously? And at the same time he knew that he and Harold could never be friends and that none of them, really, would ever get any closer to each other than they were right now. Harold lit his stick and passed it to Vivaldo. “Go, baby,” he said—very tenderly, watching Vivaldo with a smile. Vivaldo took his turn, while the others watched him. It was a kind of community endeavor, as though he were a baby just learning to use the potty or just learning how to walk. They all but applauded when he passed it on to Lorenzo, who took his turn and passed it on to Belle. “Ooh,” said Lorenzo, “I’m flying,” and leaned back with his head in Belle’s lap. Vivaldo turned over on his back, head resting on his arms, knees pointing to the sky. He felt like singing. “My chick’s a singer,” he announced. The sky looked, now, like a vast and friendly ocean, in which drowning was forbidden, and the stars seemed stationed there, like beacons. To what country did this ocean lead? for oceans always led to some great good place: hence, sailors, missionaries, saints, and Americans. “Where’s she singing?” asked Lorenzo. His voice seemed to drop gently from the air: Vivaldo was watching heaven. “She’s not, right now. But she will be soon. And she’s going to be great.” “I’ve seen her,” Belle said, “she’s beautiful.” He turned his head in the direction of the voice. “You’ve seen her? Where?” “In the restaurant where she works. I went there with somebody—not with Lorenzo,” and he heard her giggle, “and the cat I was with told me she was your girl.” There was a silence. Then, “She’s very tough.” “Why do you say that?” “Oh, I don’t know. She just seemed—very tough, that’s all. I don’t mean she wasn’t nice. But she was very sure of herself, you could tell she wasn’t going to take any shit.” He laughed. “Sounds like my girl, all right.” “I wish I looked like her,” Belle said. “My!” “I like you just the way you are,” said Lorenzo. Out of the corner of his eye, and from far away, Vivaldo watched his arms go up and saw Belle’s dark hair fall. Just above my head. That was a song that Ida sometimes sang, puttering inefficiently about the kitchen, which always seemed sandy with coffee grinds and vaguely immoral with dead cigarettes on the burnt, blistered paint of the shelves. Perhaps the answer was in the songs. Just above my head, I hear music in the air. And I really do believe There’s a God somewhere.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Pretty well—under the circumstances.” Her pause suggested that the circumstances were grim. “She had a right fine boy, weighed seven pounds.” She was about to say more; but Ida entered. She was already quite tall, nearly as tall as she was going to be. She, too, had been dealing in hot combs and curling irons, Vivaldo’s later impression that she had been in pigtails was due to the fact that her hair had been curled tightly all over her head. The dress she wore was long and blue and full, of some rustling material which billowed above her long legs. She came into the room, looking only at her brother, with an enormous, childlike smile. He and Rufus stood up. “You see, I got here,” said Rufus, smiling, and he and his sister kissed each other on the cheek. Their mother stood watching them with a proud, frowning smile. “I see you did,” said Ida, moving a little away from him, and laughing. Her delight in seeing her brother was so real that Vivaldo felt a kind of anguish, thinking of his own house, his own sister. “I been wondering if you’d make it—you keep so busy all the time.” She said the last with a wry, proud, grown-up exasperation, as one submitting to the penalties imposed by her brother’s power and glory. She had not looked at Vivaldo, though she was vividly aware of him. But Vivaldo would not exist until Rufus permitted it. He permitted it now, tentatively, with one hand on his sister’s neck. He turned her toward Vivaldo. “I brought a friend of mine along, Vivaldo Moore. This is my sister, Ida.” They shook hands. Her handshake was as brief as her mother’s had been, but stronger. And she looked at Vivaldo differently, as though he were a glamorous stranger, glamorous not only in himself and his color but in his scarcely to-be-imagined relation to her brother. “Well, now, where,” asked Rufus, teasingly, “do you think you’d like to go, young lady?” And he watched her, grinning. But there was a constraint in the room now, too, which had not been there before, which had entered with the girl who would soon be a woman. She stood there like a target and a prize, the natural prey of someone—somewhere—who would soon be on her trail. “Oh, I don’t care,” she said. “Anywhere you-all want to go.” “But you so dressed up—you sure you ain’t ashamed to be seen with us?” He was also dressed up, in his best dark suit and a shirt and tie he had borrowed from Vivaldo. Ida and her mother laughed. “Boy, you stop teasing your sister,” said Mrs. Scott. “Well, go on, get your coat,” Rufus said, “and we’ll make tracks.” “We going far?” “We going far enough for you to have to wear a coat.” “She don’t mean is you going far,” said Mrs. Scott. “She trying to find out where you going and what time you coming back.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  “That’s not entirely true,” said Eric, “don’t listen to her. They’re just very interested, that’s all. I don’t believe anything until it happens.” He took a blue handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his face. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Baby,” said Vivaldo, “you’re going to be a star.” He kissed Eric on the forehead. “You son of a bitch.” “Nothing is set,” said Eric, and he looked at Cass. He grinned. “I’m really part of an economy drive. They can get me cheap, you know, and they’ve got almost everybody you ever heard of lined up for the other roles—so my agent explained to me that my name goes below the title—” “But in equal size,” said Cass. “One of those and introducing deals,” said Eric, and laughed. He looked pleased about his good news for the first time. “Well, baby, it looks like you’ve made it now,” said Ida. “Congratulations.” “Your clairvoyant Frenchman,” Cass said, “was right.” “Only what are they going to do about that ante-bellum accent?” asked Vivaldo. “Look,” said Eric, “let’s go see this movie. I speak French in it.” He threw an arm around Vivaldo’s shoulder. “Impeccably.” “Hell,” Vivaldo said, “I don’t really feel like seeing a movie. I’d much rather take you out and get you stinking drunk.” “You’re going to,” said Eric, “as soon as the movie’s over.” And they came, laughing, through the doors just as the French film began. The titles were superimposed over a montage of shots of Paris in the morning: laborers on their bicycles, on their way to work, coming down from the hills of Montmartre, crossing the Place de la Concorde, rolling through the great square before Notre Dame. In great close-ups, the traffic lights flashed on and off, the white batons of the traffic policemen rose and fell; it soon became apparent that one had already picked up the central character and would follow him to his destination; which, if one could judge from the music would be a place of execution. The film was one of those politics, sex, and vengeance dramas the French love to turn out, and it starred one of the great French actors, who had died when this film was completed. So the film, which was not remarkable in itself, held this undeniable necrophilic fascination. Working with this actor, being on the set while this man worked, had been one of the great adventures of Eric’s life. And though Cass, Vivaldo, and Ida were interested in the film principally because Eric appeared in it, the attention which they brought to it was dictated by the silent intensity of Eric’s adoration. They had all heard of the great actor, and they all admired him. But they could not see, of course, as Eric could, with what economy of means he managed great effects and turned an indifferent role into a striking creation.

• From Another Country (1962)

  The policeman seemed to take a dim, even a murderous view of this, and, ceasing to wait on occult inspiration, peered commandingly into the bar. The signal he then received caused him, slowly, to move a little away. But Vivaldo beamed on Eric as though Eric were his pride and joy; and said again, to Ida, staring at Eric, “Ida, this is Eric. Eric, meet Ida.” And he took their hands and placed them together. Ida grasped his hand, laughing, and looked into his eyes. “Eric,” she said, “I think I’ve heard more about you than I’ve ever heard about any living human being. I’m so glad to meet you, I can’t tell you. I’d decided you weren’t nothing but a myth.” The touch of her hand shocked him, as did her eyes and her warmth and her beauty. “I’m delighted to meet you, too,” he said. “You can’t have heard more about me—you can’t have heard better about me—than I’ve heard about you.” They held each other’s eyes for a second, she still smiling, wearing all her beauty as a great queen wears her robes—and establishing that distance between them, too—and then one of the musicians came to the doorway, and said, “Ida, honey, the man says come on with it if you coming.” And he disappeared. Ida said, “Come on, follow me. They’ve got a table for us way in back somewhere.” She took Eric’s arm. “They’re doing me a favor, letting me sit in. I’ve never sung in public before. So I can’t afford to bug them.” “You see,” said Vivaldo, behind them, “you got off the boat just in time for a great occasion.” “You should have let him say that,” said Ida. “I was just about to,” said Eric, “believe me.” They squeezed through the crowd to the slightly wider area in the back. Here, Ida paused, looking about her. She looked up at Eric. “What happened to Richard and Cass?” “They asked me to apologize for them. They couldn’t come. One of the kids was sick.” He felt, as he said this, a faint tremor of disloyalty—to Ida: as though she were mixed up in his mind with the colored children who had attacked Paul and Michael in the park. “Today of all days,” she sighed—but seemed, really, scarcely to be concerned about their absence. Her eyes continued to search the crowd; she sighed again, a sigh of private resignation. The musicians were ready, attempts were being made to silence the mob. A waiter appeared and seated them at a tiny table in a corner next to the ladies’ room, and took their order. The malevolent heat, now that they were trapped in this spot, began rising from the floor and descending from the ceiling.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The king, who was a wise prince, was pleased with Martuccio's counsel and punctually following it, found himself thereby to have won his war. Wherefore Martuccio became in high favour with him and rose in consequence to great and rich estate. The report of these things spread over the land and it came presently to Costanza's ears that Martuccio Gomito, whom she had long deemed dead, was alive, whereupon the love of him, that was now grown cool in her heart, broke out of a sudden into fresh flame and waxed greater than ever, whilst dead hope revived in her. Therewithal she altogether discovered her every adventure to the good lady, with whom she dwelt, and told her that she would fain go to Tunis, so she might satisfy her eyes of that whereof her ears had made them desireful, through the reports received. The old lady greatly commended her purpose and taking ship with her, carried her, as if she had been her mother, to Tunis, where they were honourably entertained in the house of a kinswoman of hers. There she despatched Carapresa, who had come with them, to see what she could learn of Martuccio, and she, finding him alive and in great estate and reporting this to the old gentlewoman, it pleased the latter to will to be she who should signify unto Martuccio that his Costanza was come thither to him; wherefore, betaking herself one day whereas he was, she said to him, 'Martuccio, there is come to my house a servant of thine from Lipari, who would fain speak with thee privily there; wherefore, not to trust to others, I have myself, at his desire, come to give thee notice thereof.' He thanked her and followed her to her house, where when Costanza saw him, she was like to die of gladness and unable to contain herself, ran straightway with open arms to throw herself on his neck; then, embracing him, without availing to say aught, she fell a-weeping tenderly, both for compassion of their past ill fortunes and for present gladness.