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 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 Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  However, let me warn you: Experiencing this incredible pleasure can be very addictive. My annual retreats have turned into far more frequent excursions. No human can meet our deepest needs like God can, nor should anyone be expected to. My husband doesn’t mind granting me this time away because I come back revived, with a renewed sense of joy over being a bride of Christ and a fresh passion for being the wife and mother God has called me to be. I can think of no better way to spend my time. How about you? Do you need a personal revival and renewed sense of joy? Are you longing for a deeper level of intimacy and fulfillment than a husband can possibly provide? Are you ready to bask in God’s special love for you and relish your role as His chosen bride? If so, carve out some special time and a special place to run away and rendezvous with your heavenly Bridegroom. [image file=image_rsrc247.jpg] Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep…How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among [women] find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. —Psalm 36:5-9 [image file=image_rsrc24M.jpg] all quiet on the home front To [her] who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. REVELATION 3:21 I recently met a young woman who grew up in the war-torn country of Sierra Leone in West Africa. As bullets whizzed through the city streets and landmines blasted limbs off of children playing in the fields, every day was a struggle for Lela and her family to survive. She had been in the United States less than two years when I asked her what she liked most about living in this country. She answered with a sweet smile, “Peace. There is nothing like living in peace.” I also asked, “How did you cope with the chaos of war all around you day after day?” Shrugging her shoulders, she replied, “When war is all you have ever known, you don’t realize how chaotic it is.” Although I’ve never known the terror of dodging bullets or landmines, the truth of Lela’s statement struck a chord. I never realized how intense and chaotic my life was until I experienced the peace of living with sexual and emotional integrity. For years I had walked blindly into compromising situations, begged over dinner tables for morsels of affection, and found myself sleeping with the enemy time and time again. I consistently mistook intensity for intimacy and the concept of a peaceful relationship seemed unfathomable.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN ASSIGNED TO PARADISE I n August 1960, one month after finishing my residency at Johns Hopkins, I was inducted into the army. In those years the universal draft was in effect, but medical students were given the option of signing on to a deferment program called the Berry Plan, which allowed them to finish medical school and residency before entering the army. My first six weeks in the army were spent in basic training in Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, and while there I was notified that I would be spending the next two years at a base in Germany. A few days later, another memo informed me that I would instead be stationed in France. And two weeks after that, mirabile dictu, I was told to report for service at Tripler Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that was the assignment that stuck. I remember my first moment in Hawaii with great clarity. As soon as I stepped from the plane, Jim Nicholas, an army psychiatrist, destined to be my close buddy for the next two years, placed a lei of plumeria blossoms around my neck. The scent rose into my nose, a sweet, heavy fragrance, and right there, I felt something shift within me. My senses awakened and soon I became intoxicated by the aroma of plumeria that was everywhere: at the airport, in the streets, and in the small Waikiki apartment Jim had selected for us and stocked with groceries and flowers. In 1960 Hawaii was a place of great natural beauty: the plumage, palm trees, hibiscus, red spiked ginger, white spider lilies, birds-of-paradise, and, of course, the ocean with its teal-blue waves gently rolling to rest on sparkling sand. Everyone wore strange and wonderful clothes: Jim greeted me wearing a flowery shirt, shorts, and sandals called zoris and took me to a Waikiki shop where I took off my army uniform, for a day at least, and walked out wearing zoris, a violet aloha shirt, and brilliant blue shorts. M arilyn and our three children arrived two days later, and together we drove to the top of the Pali Lookout with an otherworldly view of the eastern part of the island. As we gazed at the dark green crenellated mountains around us, the waterfalls and rainbows, the blue-green ocean, the endless beaches, Marilyn pointed down toward Kailua and Lanikai and pronounced, “This is paradise: I want to live there.” I was delighted by her delight. It had been a horrendous few weeks for her. During my six-week basic training in San Antonio, life had been hard for both of us, but particularly severe for her. We knew no one in San Antonio, where it was over one hundred degrees every day. I had a demanding daily schedule at the army school and was away all day five or six days a week, leaving Marilyn with our three small children.

• From Real Life (2020)

  Elle commence maintenant. — Oh que oui ! » s’était exclamé Yngve, posant la main dans le dos de Lukas. « Oh que oui, bon dieu. — À la vie », avait dit Emma, levant son gobelet en plastique. La lumière des flammes dansait à travers la paroi. Wallace regardait cette lumière onduler, se contorsionner dans le liquide. Des bulles dorées montaient à la surface du champagne. Il avait levé son gobelet aussi. « À la vie », avaient-ils tous dit, doucement, chacun à sa manière, puis plus fort, jusqu’à le scander encore et encore. À la vie, disaient-ils, imprégnant ces mots de tous leurs espoirs et désirs pour l’avenir. Leur rire résonnait dans la nuit et les arbres, et sur la rive qu’ils avaient derrière eux, des gens dînaient, riaient, pleuraient et faisaient leurs affaires comme ils l’avaient toujours fait et le feraient toujours. Titre original : Real Life Conception graphique : Karine Picault – Studio Delcourt Design original : Grace Han Première publication chez Riverhead, USA, en 2020. © Brandon Taylor, 2020. © La croisée, un label du groupe Delcourt, 2022, pour la présente traduction. La croisée Groupe Delcourt 8, rue Léon Jouhaux 75010 Paris www.editions-lacroisee.fr ISBN : 978-2-4130-5341-5 Ce document numérique a été réalisé par Nord Compo . Sommaire Couverture Titre Partie 1 Partie 2 Partie 3 Partie 4 Partie 5 Partie 6 Partie 7 Partie 8 Partie 9 Partie 10 Remerciements À propos de l'auteur Copyright L’orage grondait sans cesse – tonnerre et éclairs et vent tellement violent qu’il ébranlait les arbres parfois jusqu’à les déraciner. Il a tellement plu un été que rien ne voulait rester dans la terre, des pieds de tomates et de choux poussaient incongrus parmi les ronces parce que les graines avaient été dispersées sur le sable par la pluie. C’est ce qui me revient en premier, le fumet de la terre détrempée, la chaleur collée au sol et la brume grise qui se levait après un gros orage. Les nuages étaient d’un gris-noir violacé, s’adoucissant quand la météo se calmait, et on voyait bien de quel côté était venue la tempête, car les arbres étaient encore écartelés de part et d’autre et il s’ouvrait un large sentier à travers les bois, comme si un animal gigantesque s’y était frayé un chemin.

• 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.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO OXFORD AND THE ENCHANTED COINS OF MR. SFICA M y many years at Stanford often blur together in my memory, but my sabbaticals stand out clearly etched in my mind. During the early 1970s I continued to teach medical students and residents and enlisted many of them as collaborators in psychotherapy research. I published journal articles on group therapy for alcoholics and group therapy for bereaved spouses. At some point my publisher asked me to undertake a second edition of my group therapy textbook. Knowing this project would require my full attention, I applied for a six-month sabbatical, and, in 1974, Marilyn and I and our five-year-old son, Ben, left for Oxford, where I would have an office in the psychiatry department of the Warneford Hospital. Our daughter, Eve, had begun college at Wesleyan, and my other two sons remained behind to finish the school year in Palo Alto under the care of old friends, who would stay with them in our home. We had rented a house in the center of Oxford, but shortly before we arrived, a British airliner crashed, killing all passengers, including the father of the rental family. So, at the last minute, we scrambled to find another Oxford residence. When we found that none were available, we rented a charming old thatched-roof cottage in the small one-pub village of Black Bourton, about thirty minutes away from Oxford. Black Bourton was small, very British, and very secluded: perfect conditions for writing! Revising a textbook is demanding and dull work, but necessary if the book is to remain relevant. I analyzed some research I had just completed, seeking to understand more about what really helped patients during therapy. I had given a large sample of successful group therapy patients a questionnaire of fifty-five statements (related to catharsis, understanding, support, guidance, universality, group cohesiveness, etc.), and just on a whim at the last minute, I threw in a cluster of five unorthodox statements I labeled as “existential factors”—statements such as “recognizing that no matter how close I get to others, I must still face life alone,” or “recognizing there is no escape from some of life’s pain and from death.” I had asked patients to sort these into piles (a “Q sort”) from least to most helpful, and was amazed to find that this whole throw-in category of existential factors ranked far higher than I had expected. Clearly, existential factors were playing a greater role in effective group therapy than we had realized, and I set about making this explicit in a new chapter. As I was starting to address this idea I received a call from the United States informing me that I had just been awarded the prestigious Strecker Award in psychiatry. I was very pleased, of course, but not for long. Two days later, an official letter arrived providing details: I was required to give an address to a large audience in Pennsylvania a year hence. No problem with that.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  But here’s the passage … it follows right after that: ‘And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were the indefinable, inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight. The world so disclosed is rather the world of dreams, rather the world in which children sometimes live, instantly appearing, and instantly vanishing away, a world beyond all expression or analysis, neither of the intellect nor of the senses….’” “It is beautiful,” she said, as I put the book down. “But don’t you try to write like that. Let Arthur Machen write that way, if he wishes. You write your own way.” I sat down at the table again. A bottle of Chartreuse was standing beside my coffee. As I poured a thimbleful of the fiery green liqueur into my glass, I said: “There’s only one thing missing now: a harem .” “Pop supplied the Chartreuse,” she said. “He was so delighted with those pages.” “Let’s hope he’ll like the next fifty pages as much.” “You’re not writing the book for him, Val. You’re writing it for us .” “That’s true,” I said. “I forget that sometimes.” It occurred to me then that I hadn’t told her anything yet about the outline of the real book. “There’s something I have to tell you,” I began. “Or should I? Maybe I ought to keep it to myself a while longer.” She begged me not to tease. “All right, I’ll tell you. It’s about the book I intend to write one day. I’ve got the notes for it all written out. I wrote you a long letter about it, when you were in Vienna or God knows where. I couldn’t send the letter because you gave me no address. Yes, this will really be a book … a huge one. About you and me.” “Didn’t you keep the letter?” “No. I tore it up. Your fault! But I’ve got the notes. Only I won’t show them to you yet.” “Why?” “Because I don’t want any comments. Besides, if we talk about it I may never write the book. Also, there are some things I wouldn’t want you to know about until I had written them out.” “You can trust me,” she said.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Messer Lizio hearing all this from his wife, said, for that he was an old man and maybe therefore somewhat cross-grained, 'What nightingale is this to whose song she would sleep? I will yet make her sleep to the chirp of the crickets.' Caterina, coming to know this, more of despite than for the heat, not only slept not that night, but suffered not her mother to sleep, still complaining of the great heat. Accordingly, next morning, the latter repaired to her husband and said to him, 'Sir, you have little tenderness for yonder girl; what mattereth it to you if she lie in the gallery? She could get no rest all night for the heat. Besides, can you wonder at her having a mind to hear the nightingale sing, seeing she is but a child? Young folk are curious of things like themselves. Messer Lizio, hearing this, said, 'Go to, make her a bed there, such as you think fit, and bind it about with some curtain or other, and there let her lie and hear the nightingale sing to her heart's content.' The girl, learning this, straightway let make a bed in the gallery and meaning to lie there that same night, watched till she saw Ricciardo and made him a signal appointed between them, by which he understood what was to be done. Messer Lizio, hearing the girl gone to bed, locked a door that led from his chamber into the gallery and betook himself likewise to sleep. As for Ricciardo, as soon as he heard all quiet on every hand, he mounted a wall, with the aid of a ladder, and thence, laying hold of certain toothings of another wall, he made his way, with great toil and danger, if he had fallen, up to the gallery, where he was quietly received by the girl with the utmost joy. Then, after many kisses, they went to bed together and took delight and pleasure one of another well nigh all that night, making the nightingale sing many a time. The nights being short and the delight great and it being now, though they thought it not, near day, they fell asleep without any covering, so overheated were they what with the weather and what with their sport, Caterina having her right arm entwined about Ricciardo's neck and holding him with the left hand by that thing which you ladies think most shame to name among men.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  One day I brought my computer to the school, waited until the end of class, and begged or bribed—I forget which, perhaps both—the teacher to print a precious hard copy of the work to date. Inspiration came quickly in Bali. Without mail, a telephone, or other distractions, I wrote better and more rapidly than ever before. In my two months there I wrote four of the ten stories. In each story I spent a great deal of time disguising the identity of the patients. I altered the patients’ appearances, occupations, ages, nationalities, marital status, and often even gender. I wanted to be entirely certain that no one could possibly recognize them, and, of course, I would send the patient the finished story and ask for written permission. In our downtime, Marilyn and I explored the island. We adored the graceful Balinese and admired their art, dancing, puppetry, carving, and painting, and we marveled at the religious parades. The beach-walking and snorkeling were heavenly. One day our driver took us, along with two bicycles, to one of Bali’s highest points, and we coasted several miles downhill through villages, passing stands selling slices of jackfruit and durian. To my surprise, chess was popular in Bali, and I found games everywhere. I often went early to a nearby restaurant to play chess with the waiter. My agreement with Marilyn was to spend the second half of the sabbatical year in Europe. I love tropical islands, and Marilyn loves France, and throughout our marriage we have compromised. Marilyn had just officially left her administrative position at Stanford (though she has stayed on until this day as a senior scholar), and she still had some professional duties that took her back to Palo Alto on our way to Europe. I stopped in Hawaii for a writing retreat on Oahu at our Japanese host’s lovely condo, where I wrote two more stories. Finally, after five weeks, Marilyn rang the bell, informing me it was time to resume our trip. Next stop, Bellagio, Italy. A year earlier we had each applied and been accepted for residence at the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, she to work on her women’s memoirs of the French Revolution, and I to work on my book of psychotherapy tales. A residency at Bellagio must be one of the greatest perks of academia. Only a short walk from Lake Como, the Rockefeller compound has beautiful gardens, a superb chef, who hand-made the pasta and served a different variety every night, and a handsome central villa that houses the thirty scholars and provides a separate study for each. The scholars met together at mealtimes and for evening seminars, where we each presented our work. Marilyn and I wrote each morning and in the afternoons we often took the ferryboat to one of the small, charming villages on Lake Como. I spent a great deal of time with one of the other scholars, Stanley Elkins, a marvelous comic novelist.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  For years, Marilyn had wanted to move far away from Washington, and soon we were in full agreement: we both wanted to remain in Hawaii, or as close as possible. Before Hawaii, my entire life had focused on my work, with far too little time for my wife and children. Hawaii opened me up to the beauty of my surroundings. The beaches, especially, beckoned, and Marilyn and I walked on them for hours, holding hands just as we had in high school. I spent much more time with my children, a good bit of it in the warm ocean, teaching them to swim, snorkel, and body surf. (I never mastered surfing on a surfboard—I didn’t have the balance.) I took my children to our neighborhood cinema on Friday evenings to watch samurai films, and they wore their pajamas just like the local kids. The army would not ship my Lambretta to Hawaii, but was willing to ship a telescope, so, while still in Baltimore, I had traded the Lambretta for a mechanized eight-inch reflecting telescope, something I had coveted since my childhood forays into telescope making. However, aside from a couple of times when I lugged it to the top of a mountain, I could make little use of my telescope in Hawaii because of the persistently hazy Hawaiian night sky. One of my patients was the flight controller at the army air force base, and through him I enjoyed the perk of hopping weekend flights to the Philippines and Japan. I did some snorkeling in the exquisite waters off a small island in the Philippines, and saw sunsets in Manila that remain forever in my mind’s eye. I stayed at the officers’ club in Tokyo and explored the city. Whenever I was lost, I hailed a taxi and showed him the club card with the address written in Japanese. I had been warned by the club manager to watch the driver when I showed him the card: if he inhaled sharply, then I should jump out of the cab, as Tokyo taxi drivers would not lose face by admitting they didn’t know an address. Shortly after our arrival, Marilyn obtained a faculty position at the University of Hawaii French Department. She was especially delighted to teach a course on contemporary French literature with so many Vietnamese students fluent in French, even though they had great difficulty grasping Sartre’s ideas about alienation, as they were planning to swim after class in the warm blue ocean. Marilyn needed our car to drive to the university, so I bought a peppy Yamaha motorcycle and was thrilled with my thirty-minute morning commute to Tripler over the top of the Pali. During our time there, the Wilson Tunnel through the mountains opened, and I then took that shorter route to work and had the daily experience of entering it in bright sunshine and emerging almost always in the midst of a delicious, warm Hawaiian shower.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Laden with gifts, we returned to our hotel room and saw yet another gift: a boat, two feet long, with fluttering sails entirely made of chocolate. Marilyn and I happily munched away. The following day I signed books at Hestia Bookstore, a small shop in the center of Athens. I’ve done dozens of bookstore signings before and since, but this was the granddaddy of all signings. The queue led out of the store and continued for eight blocks, causing considerable traffic disruption. People not only bought new books at the store but also brought with them some previously bought books for me to sign. Writing their names was taxing, as most were foreign to me—for example, Docia, Ianthe, Nereida, Tatiana—and difficult to spell. Customers were then asked to print their names in large letters on yellow slips of paper to hand to me with their books. Many were taking photographs, but that held up the line and soon they were asked not to take photos. After an hour the book purchasers were told I would be able to sign a maximum of only four, and then, an hour later, three, and eventually only one old book along with new books. Even so, the signing lasted almost four hours, and I signed over eight hundred new books and a great many more older ones. Recently I was saddened to hear that the venerable Hestia Bookstore had closed its doors for good, a victim of the Greek monetary crisis. The great majority of bookstore customers in that line were women—as is always the case at my book signings—and I had the singular experience of having at least fifty lovely Greek women whisper in my ear, “I love you.” Lest it get to my head, Stavros pulled me aside and told me that Greek women use those words frequently, with a more casual meaning than Americans. T he signing at the Hestia Bookstore came to mind ten years later, when an elderly British physician asked to see me in consultation. Dissatisfied with his life as a bachelor and his own unrealized potential, he was highly ambivalent about consulting me: on the one hand, he wanted my help; on the other, he was also deeply envious of my success as a writer, because he was convinced that he, too, had the talent for writing fine books. Toward the end of our consultation, he recounted a key story that had haunted him for fifty years, ever since he had spent two years in Greece teaching English at a girls’ school. At the end of the farewell ceremonies, just as he was preparing to leave, a beautiful young Greek student gave him a goodbye hug and whispered in his ear, “I love you.” Ever since then, he had thought of that young student, heard her whispered words in his mind, and tortured himself for not having had the courage to embark upon the life that was meant for him.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He clung to LeRoy, whose arms tightened around him. “Poor boy,” LeRoy murmured again, “poor boy.” Eric buried his face in LeRoy’s neck and LeRoy’s body shook a little— the chest and belly of a man! —and then he pushed Eric away and guided him toward the stream and they sat down beside it. “I guess you know, now,” LeRoy said, after a long silence, while Eric trailed his hand in the water, “what they saying about us in this town. I don’t care but it can get us in a lot of trouble and you got to stop coming to see me, Eric.” He had not known what they were saying, or he had been unable to allow himself to know; but he knew now. He said, staring into the water, and with a totally mysterious abandon, “Well, if we’ve got the name, we might as well have the game is how I see it. I don’t give a shit about those people, let them all go to hell; what have they got to do with you and me?” LeRoy looked briefly over at Eric and smiled. “You a nice boy, Eric, but you don’t know the score. Your Daddy owns half the folks in this town, ain’t but so much they can do to you. But what they can do to me—–! ” And he spread his hands wide. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” LeRoy laughed. “You better get out of this town. Declare, they going to lynch you before they get around to me.” He laughed again and rubbed his hand in Eric’s bright red hair. Eric grabbed his hand. They looked at each other, and a total, a dreadful silence fell. “Boy,” LeRoy said, weakly. And then, after a moment, “You really out for trouble, ain’t you?” And then nothing was said. They lay together beside the stream. That day. That day. Had he known where that day would lead him would he have writhed as he did, in such an anguished joy, beneath the great weight of his first lover? But if he had known, or been capable of caring, where such a day might lead him, it could never have been his necessity to bring about such a day. He was frightened and in pain and the boy who held him so relentlessly was suddenly a stranger; and yet this stranger worked in Eric an eternal, a healing transformation. Many years were to pass before he could begin to accept what he, that day, in those arms, with the stream whispering in his ear, discovered; and yet that day was the beginning of his life as a man. What had always been hidden was to him, that day, revealed and it did not matter that, fifteen years later, he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Lorenzo put on something at once bell-like and doleful, by the Modern Jazz Quartet. “Here.” He looked up. Harold stood above him with a glowing stick. He sat up, smiling vaguely, and carefully picked up his beer from the floor before taking the stick from Harold. Harold watched him, smiling intensely, as he took a long, shaky drag. He took a swallow of his beer and gave the stick back. Harold inhaled deeply and expertly, and rubbed his chest. “Come on over to the window,” Belle called. Her voice sounded high and pleased, like a child’s. And, exactly as though he were responding to a child, Vivaldo, though he preferred to remain alone on the sofa, walked over to the window. Harold followed him. Belle and Lorenzo sat on the floor, sharing a stick between them, and staring out at the New York rooftops. “It’s strange,” Belle said. “It’s so ugly by day and so beautiful at night.” “Let’s go up on the roof,” said Lorenzo. “Oh! What a groovy idea!” They gathered up the makings, and the beer, and Belle picked up a blanket; and, like children, they tiptoed out of the apartment, up the stairs to the roof. And there they seemed bathed in silence, all alone. Belle spread the blanket, which was not big enough for them all. She and Lorenzo shared it. Vivaldo took another large drag and squatted on the edge of the roof, his arms hugging his knees. “Don’t do that, man,” Lorenzo whispered, “you’re too near the edge, I can’t bear to watch it.” Vivaldo smiled and moved back, stretching out on his belly beside them . “I’m sorry. I’m like that, too. I can hang over the edge myself, but I can’t watch anybody else do it.” Belle grabbed his hand. He looked up at her pale, thin face, framed by the black hair. She smiled, and she was prettier than she had seemed in the bar. “I like you,” she said. “You’re a real groovy cat. Lorenzo always said you were, but I never believed him.” Her accent, too, was more noticeable now; she sounded like the simplest and most innocent of country girls—if country girls were innocent, and he supposed, at some point in their lives, they had to be. “Why, thank you,” he said. Lorenzo, palely caught in the lights of heaven and earth, grinned over at him. Vivaldo pulled his hand from Belle’s hand and reached over and struck Lorenzo lightly on the cheek. “I like you, too, both of you.” “How you feeling, dad?” It was Harold, who seemed to be quite far away. “I feel wonderful.”

• From Push (1996)

  Like geeses from the lake. I see the wings beating beating hear geeses. It's more birds than geeses. Where so many birds come from. I see flying. Feel flying. Am flying. Far up, but my body down in circle. Precious is bird. Someone is holding my hand. It's Rita. She is massage my hand. I come back from being a bird to hear beautiful girl crying. Smell Mama. Carl, the way his knees on either side of my neck. Girl say, "Thank you for letting me share." She say, 'This is a Tuesday night beginner's meeting, to share raise your hand." I raise my hand. My hand is going up through the smell of Mama, my hand is pushing Daddy's dick out my face. "I was rape by my father. And beat." No one is talking except me. "Mama push my head down in her ..." I can't talk no more. Beautiful girl whisper to me, "Are you through?" I say yes. She say, "Pick the next person." I look up from my shoes, Nikes; girls got they hand up. I pick girl in overalls with blue eyes. Grab Rita's hand, listen. Listen to girl rape by brother, listen to old woman rape by her father; don't remember till he die when she is 65 years old. Girls, old women, white women, lotta white women. Girl's younger sister murdered by the cult? Jewish girl, we had money on Long Island (like Westchester), my father was a prominent child psychiatrist. It started when I was about nine years old. Girls like Jermaine is, I am a proud lesbian. But it's the only thing I'm proud of; I was confine to a mental institution for fourteen years, diagnosed as a schizophrenia— What am I hearing! One hour and a half women talk. Can this be done happen to so many people? I know I am not lying! But is they? I thought cult was in movie. What kinda world this babies raped. A father break a girl's arm. Sweet talk you suck his dick. All kinda women here. Princess girls, some fat girls, old women, young women. One thing we got in common, no the thing, is we was rape. Afterwards we go out for coffee. I have never been "out for coffee" before. Rita put her arm around my shoulder, I order hot chocolate 'cause that's what I like. Blond girl who is airline stewardess say, "Precious! That's a beautiful name!" I'm alive inside. A bird is my heart. Mama and Daddy is not win. I'm winning. I'm drinking hot chocolate in the Village wif girls—all kind who love me. How that is so I don't know. How Mama and Daddy know me sixteen years and hate me, how a stranger meet me and love me.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The New York Times reviewer, a child psychiatrist, was affronted by the format and ended her sour review saying that she would prefer to read her case histories in professional journals. A few minutes after midnight on Sunday night, however, I was awakened by a phone call from my overjoyed publisher saying that the Wednesday New York Times would publish a rave review by Eva Hoffman, a well-known writer and reviewer. To this day I am grateful to Eva Hoffman, whom I had the pleasure of meeting years later. I did readings of the book in New York and at bookstores in a dozen cities. Those national book tours are now largely a thing of the past, along with the profession of book tour guides, who met authors at the airport and transported them to speaking engagements. At almost every bookstore, Oliver Sacks had just preceded me, promoting his recently published book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat . Our paths crossed so much that I felt I knew him, but unfortunately we never met. I much admired his work, and after reading his moving final book, On the Move , I wrote him a fan letter shortly before he died. Within a few weeks after publication, to my total astonishment, Love’s Executioner found its way to the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for several weeks. I was soon overwhelmed with interviews and speaking requests, and remember complaining about my fatigue and stress in a lunch conversation with Phillip Lopate, a fine essayist who had been one of my instructors at a writing workshop at Bennington College. His advice to me: “Chill out and enjoy the attention—bestsellers are rare and, who knows, you might never have another.” And, oh, how right he was. Twenty-three years later, the publisher decided to reissue Love’s Executioner with a different cover and asked me to write a new afterword. I reread the book—the first time in a great many years—and had strong reactions: pride coupled with chagrin at my aging and envy of my younger self. I couldn’t help feeling this guy writes a lot better than I can . It was a pleasure to revisit all my dear old patients, many of them no longer alive. But there was one exception: the story “Fat Lady.” I remember writing that story in a Paris café and spending hours constructing the opening paragraph, which introduces the concept of countertransference, the therapist’s unbidden emotional reactions to a patient. The day Betty entered my office, the instant I saw her steering her ponderous two-hundred-fifty-pound, five-foot-two-inch frame toward my trim, high-tech office chair, I knew that a great trial of countertransference was in store for me. The story is meant to be a teaching tale for therapists, and I, even more than the patient, am the main character.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  How much the company laughed at this story, which was better understood of the ladies than Dioneo willed, let her who shall yet laugh thereat imagine for herself. But, the day's stories being now ended and the sun beginning to abate of its heat, the queen, knowing the end of her seignory to be come, rose to her feet and putting off the crown, set it on the head of Pamfilo, whom alone it remained to honour after such a fashion, and said, smiling, "My lord, there devolveth on thee a great burden, inasmuch as with thee it resteth, thou being the last, to make amends for my default and that of those who have foregone me in the dignity which thou presently holdest; whereof God lend thee grace, even as He hath vouchsafed it unto me to make thee king." Pamfilo blithely received the honour done him and answered, "Your merit and that of my other subjects will do on such wise that I shall be adjudged deserving of commendation, even as the others have been." Then, having, according to the usance of his predecessors, taken order with the seneschal of the things that were needful, he turned to the expectant ladies and said to them, "Lovesome ladies, it was the pleasure of Emilia, who hath this day been our queen, to give you, for the purpose of affording some rest to your powers, license to discourse of that which should most please you; wherefore, you being now rested, I hold it well to return to the wonted ordinance, and accordingly I will that each of you bethink herself to discourse to-morrow of this, to wit, OF WHOSO HATH ANYWISE WROUGHT GENEROUSLY OR MAGNIFICENTLY IN MATTERS OF LOVE OR OTHERWHAT. The telling and doing of these things will doubtless fire your well-disposed minds to do worthily; so will our life, which may not be other than brief in this mortal body, be made perpetual in laudatory renown; a thing which all, who serve not the belly only, as do the beasts, should not only desire, but with all diligence seek and endeavour after." The theme pleased the joyous company, who having all, with the new king's license, arisen from session, gave themselves to their wonted diversions, according to that unto which each was most drawn by desire; and on this wise they did until the hour of supper, whereunto they came joyously and were served with diligence and fair ordinance. Supper at an end, they arose to the wonted dances, and after they had sung a thousand canzonets, more diverting of words than masterly of music, the king bade Neifile sing one in her own name; whereupon, with clear and blithesome voice, she cheerfully and without delay began thus: A youngling maid am I and full of glee, Am fain to carol in the new-blown May, Love and sweet thoughts-a-mercy, blithe and free.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  Disencumbered, we felt ourselves more deeply connected to the places we visited: Mount Olympus, where the first Olympic Games had taken place over 2,500 years ago; the ancient theater of Epidaurus; and the mountain site of the Delphic oracles, which Marilyn loved most of all, comparing it to Vézelay, France, for its beauty and spiritual loftiness. At the end of the tour we returned to the airport, and there, to our utter astonishment, saw our two bags circling on the empty carousel. With some ambivalence, we collected them and embarked for our next stop, Crete. At the Crete airport we rented a small car and spent the next week leisurely circling the island. Only shards of memory persist after forty years, but both Marilyn and I remember that first night on Crete sitting in a taverna, looking at the light of the moon reflected in the flowing water of the canal passing only a few feet from our table, marveling at appetizers we’d never seen before: platters of baba ghanoush, tzatziki, taramasalata, dolmades, spanakopita, tiropita, keftedes. I loved these so much I never ordered a main course in Crete. “I want nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” Nikos Kazantzakis’s words brought a shiver to my skin as I read them the following day on his tombstone just outside the ancient Venetian walls surrounding the city of Heraklion, the capital of Crete. Having been excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church for writing the very book I had just read on the flight to Greece, The Last Temptation of Christ , Kazantzakis was forbidden a burial within the city. I kneeled by his tomb to pay homage to this great spirit and spent much of the remainder of our trip reading his Odyssey: A Modern Sequel . A t the immense palace of Knossos, we were entranced by the frescoes of powerful bare-breasted women carrying offerings for sacrifices presided over by priestesses. As she has ever since I’ve known her, Marilyn gave me an informed tour and was particularly attentive to the predominance of these feminine figures. She would discuss them twenty years later in her 1997 book The History of the Breast . We drove up into the mountains and made our way to an austere Cretan monastery. Although we were invited for lunch, we were permitted to visit only a very small part of the monastery, lest we disturb the meditation of the monks. Besides, no females were allowed to enter the main monastery—not even female animals, including hens! While in Heraklion we set out looking for ancient Greek coins as a high school graduation present for our oldest son, Reid. In the very first shop we were told it was illegal to sell ancient coins to tourists, but every coin merchant ignored that dictum and readily—if furtively—showed us a private cache.