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 257 of 299 · 20 per page

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

  They barraged me with questions about the United States, about American culture and consumer trends, about different kinds of athletic shoes available in American sporting goods stores. They asked me how big I thought the American shoe market was, how big it could be, and I told them that ultimately it could be $1 billion. To this day I’m not sure where that number came from. They leaned back, gazed at each other, astonished. Now, to my astonishment, they began pitching me. “Would Blue Ribbon... be interested... in representing Tiger shoes? In the United States?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it would.” I held forth the Limber Up. “This is a good shoe,” I said. “This shoe—I can sell this shoe.” I asked them to ship me samples right away. I gave them my address and promised to send them a money order for fifty dollars. They stood. They bowed deeply. I bowed deeply. We shook hands. I bowed again. They bowed again. We all smiled. The war had never happened. We were partners. We were brothers. The meeting, which I’d expected to last fifteen minutes, had gone two hours. From Onitsuka I went straight to the nearest American Express office and sent a letter to my father. Dear Dad: Urgent. Please wire fifty dollars right away to Onitsuka Corp of Kobe. Ho ho, hee hee... strange things are happening. BACK IN MY hotel I walked in circles around my tatami mat, trying to decide. Part of me wanted to race back to Oregon, wait for those samples, get a jump on my new business venture. Also, I was crazed with loneliness, cut off from everything and everyone I knew. The occasional sight of a New York Times, or a Time magazine, gave me a lump in my throat. I was a castaway, a kind of modern Crusoe. I wanted to be home again. Now. And yet. I was still aflame with curiosity about the world. I still wanted to see, to explore. Curiosity won. I went to Hong Kong and walked the mad, chaotic streets, horrified by the sight of legless, armless beggars, old men kneeling in filth, alongside pleading orphans. The old men were mute, but the children had a cry they repeated: Hey, rich man, hey, rich man, hey, rich man. Then they’d weep or slap the ground. Even after I gave them all the money in my pockets, the cry never stopped. I went to the edge of the city, climbed to the top of Victoria Peak, gazed off into the distance at China. In college I’d read the analects of Confucius—The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones—and now I felt strongly that I’d never have a chance to move this particular mountain. I’d never get any closer to that walled-off mystical land, and it made me feel unaccountably sad. Incomplete. I went to the Philippines, which had all the madness and chaos of Hong Kong, and twice the poverty.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was indeed Zena: she stood beside me plumper and even handsomer than when I had seen her last, and clad in a scarlet coat and a bracelet with charms on. ‘Zena!’ I said again. ‘Oh! How good it is to see you.’ I took her hand and pressed it, and she laughed. ‘I’ve met just about every gal I ever knew here, today,’ she said. ‘And then I saw this other one, standing up against a tent flap with a fag at her lip and I thought, Lord, but don’t she look like old Nan King? What a lark, if it should be her, after all this time - and here, of all places! And I stepped up a bit closer, and then I saw that your hair was all clipped, and I knew it was you, for sure.’ ‘Oh, Zena! I was certain I should never hear from you again.’ She looked a little sheepish at that; and then, remembering, I pressed her hand even harder and said in quite a different tone: ‘What a nerve you’ve got, though! After leaving me in such a state, that time in Kilburn! I thought I should die.’ Now she made a show of tossing her head. ‘Well! You done me very brown, you know, over that money.’ ‘I do know it. What a little beast I was! I suppose, you never did get to the colonies ...’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘My friend who went to Australia came back. She said the place was full of great rough fellows, and they don’t want landladies; what they want is, wives. I changed my mind about it after that. I’m happy enough, after all, in Stepney.’ ‘You’re in Stepney now? But then we’re almost neighbours! I live in Bethnal Green. With my sweetheart. Look, she’s over there.’ I put my hand on her shoulder and pointed into the crowded tent. ‘The one near the stage, with the baby on her arm.’ ‘What,’ she said, ‘not Flo Banner, that works at the gals’ home!’ ‘You don’t mean, you know her?’ ‘I have a couple of pals what’ve lived at Freemantle House, and they are always talking about how marvellous Flo Banner is! You know, I suppose, that half the gals there are mad in love with her ...’ ‘With Florence? Are you sure?’ ‘I’ll say!’ We looked into the tent together again. Florence was on her feet now, and waving a paper at the speaker at the stage. Zena laughed. ‘Fancy you and Flo Banner!’ she said. ‘I’m sure, she don’t take no nonsense from you.’ ‘You’re right,’ I answered, still gazing at Florence, still marvelling at what Zena had told me. ‘She don’t.’

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Ron and Mary Sue had four children in six years. Diana, born in 1952, was the eldest and clearly the dominant one. She had her father’s red hair and a generous splattering of freckles. Quentin, born two years later, was the only one who was not a radiant redhead; he was small with ash-blond hair, like Mary Sue, and would always be his mother’s favorite. Suzette was a year younger; she was a cheerful child, but somewhat overshadowed by her big sister. The baby, Arthur, was born in 1958. Seen together, the Hubbard family made a vivid impression, with their ruddy complexions and their striking hair color. Although the children had a nanny, they spent much of their time unsupervised. School was an afterthought; it wasn’t until Diana demanded to learn how to write her name that the children began their education. Mary Sue was a chilly presence as a mother; she rarely cuddled or even touched her children, but in the early years she would read to them—Mary Poppins, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Kipling’s stories—in her slight Texas twang. As she took on additional responsibility in Scientology, she became even more removed; but Ron would hug the kids and toss them in the air. The house echoed with his booming laugh. He taught the children how to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and showed them card tricks with his quick hands and perfectly manicured fingernails. He would play records and dance with the children to Beethoven or Ravel or Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite—bold, soaring music. He liked to sing, and he would burst into “Farewell and Adieu to You Fair Spanish Ladies,” and “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends,” a children’s song that is sung to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He was fanatical about taking vitamins, and he made sure the children took theirs, as well. Afterward, they would all roar to see who was the strongest. Hubbard was restless in Washington, and in 1959 he moved his family back to England, to a luxurious estate in Sussex called Saint Hill Manor, which he purchased from the Maharajah of Jaipur. Hubbard employed an extensive household staff, including two butlers, a housekeeper, a nanny, a tutor for the children, a chauffeur, and maintenance workers for the estate. “Dr.” Hubbard presented himself to the curious British press as an experimental horticultural scientist; to prove it, he allowed a photograph to be published of himself staring intently at a tomato that was attached to an E-Meter. The headline in Garden News was “Plants Do Worry and Feel Pain.” The grand mansion was a terrific playground for the children. It was actually a castle with crenelated rooflines, ivy-covered walls, and rumors of ghosts. There were fifty-two rolling acres to play in, with rose gardens, goldfish ponds, and a lake.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Aristotelian science was dominated by the idea of telos: like any human artifact, everything in the cosmos was directed toward a particular “end” and had a specific purpose, a “final cause.” Like the acorn that was programmed to become an oak tree, its entire being was devoted to achieving this potential. So change should be celebrated, because it represented a dynamic and universal striving for fulfillment. Aristotle’s writings are often inconsistent and contradictory, but his aim was not to devise a coherent philosophical system, rather to establish a scientific method of inquiry. His writings were simply lecture notes, and a treatise was not meant to be definitive but was always adapted to the needs of a particular group of students, some of whom would be more advanced than others and would need different material. In the Greek world, dogma (“teaching”) was not cast in stone once it was committed to writing but usually varied according to the understanding and expertise of the people to whom it was addressed. Like Plato, Aristotle was chiefly concerned not with imparting information but with promoting the philosophical way of life. 68 His scientific research was not an end in itself, therefore, but a method of conducting the bios theoretikos , the “contemplative life” that introduced human beings to the supreme happiness. What distinguished men—Aristotle had little time for the female—from other animals was their ability to think rationally. This was their “form,” the end for which they were designed, so in order to achieve eudaimonia (“well-being”) they must strive to think clearly, calculate, study, and work things out. This would also affect a man’s moral health, since qualities such as courage or generosity had to be regulated by reason. “The life according to reason is best and pleasantest,” he wrote in one of his later treatises, “since reason, more than anything else, is man.” 69 Like Plato, Aristotle believed that human intelligence was divine and immortal. It linked human beings to the gods and gave them the ability to grasp ultimate truth. Unlike sensual pleasure or purely practical activity, the pleasures of theoria (the “contemplation” of truth for its own sake) did not wax and wane but were a continuous joy, giving the thinker that self-sufficiency that characterized the highest life of all. “We must, therefore, in so far as we can, strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us,” Aristotle insisted. Theoria was a divine activity, so a man could practice it only “in so far as something divine is present in him.” 70 His biological research was a spiritual exercise: people who were “inclined to philosophy” and could “trace the links of causation” would find that it brought them “immense pleasure” 71 because, by exercising his reason, a scientist was participating in the hidden life of God.

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

  Fouts, closing out a brilliant college career, was out of his mind that night. He passed for three hundred yards, including a sixty-yard touchdown bomb that landed like a feather in his receiver’s hands. The rout was soon on. At the final gun my Ducks were on top of the Bucktooths, 30–3. I always called them my Ducks, but now they really were. They were in my shoes. Every step they took, every cut they made, was partly mine. It’s one thing to watch a sporting event and put yourself in the players’ shoes. Every fan does that. It’s another thing when the athletes are actually in your shoes. I laughed as we walked to the car. I laughed like a maniac. I laughed all the way back to Portland. This, I kept telling Penny, this is how 1972 needed to end. With a victory. Any victory would have been healing, but this, oh boy—this. 1973Like his coach, Pre just wasn’t himself after the 1972 Olympics. He was haunted and enraged by the terrorist attacks. And by his performance. He felt he’d let everyone down. He’d finished fourth. No shame in being the world’s fourth-best at your distance, we told him. But Pre knew he was better than that. And he knew he’d have done better if he hadn’t been so stubborn. He showed no patience, no guile. He could have slipped behind the front runner, coasted in his wake, stolen silver. That, however, would have gone against Pre’s religion. So he’d run all out, as always, holding nothing back, and in the final hundred yards he tired. Worse, the man he considered his archrival, Lasse Viren, of Finland, once more took the gold. We tried to lift Pre’s spirits. We assured him that Oregon still loved him. City officials in Eugene were even planning to name a street after him. “Great,” Pre said, “what’re they gonna call it—Fourth Street?” He locked himself in his metal trailer on the banks of the Willamette and he didn’t come out for weeks. In time, after pacing a lot, after playing with his German shepherd puppy, Lobo, and after large quantities of cold beer, Pre emerged. One day I heard that he’d been seen again around town, at dawn, doing his daily ten miles, Lobo trotting at his heels.

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

  1975 T here was no victory party. There was no victory dance. There wasn’t even a quick victory jig in the halls. There wasn’t time. We still didn’t have a bank, and every company needs a bank. Hayes made a list of banks with the most deposits in Oregon. They were all much smaller than First National or Bank of California, but oh well. Beggars, choosers, etc. The first six hung up on us. Number seven, First State Bank of Oregon, didn’t. The bank was in Milwaukie, a little town half an hour up the road from Beaverton. “Come on over,” said the bank president when I finally got him on the phone. He promised me one million dollars in credit, which was about his bank’s limit. We moved our account that day. That night, for the first time in about two weeks, I put my head on a pillow and slept. THE NEXT MORNING I lingered with Penny over breakfast and we talked about the upcoming Memorial Day weekend. I told her I didn’t know when I’d craved a holiday so much. I needed rest, and sleep, and good food—and I needed to watch Pre run. She gave me a wry smile. Always mixing business with pleasure. Guilty. Pre was hosting a meet that weekend in Eugene, and he’d invited the top runners in the world, including his Finnish archnemesis, Viren. Though Viren had pulled out at the last minute, there was still a gang of amazing runners competing, including one brash marathoner named Frank Shorter, who’d taken gold at the 1972 Games, in Munich, the city of his birth. Tough, smart, a lawyer now living in Colorado, Shorter was starting to become as well known as Pre, and the two were good friends. Secretly I had designs on signing Shorter to an endorsement deal. Friday night Penny and I drove down to Eugene and took our place with seven thousand screaming, roistering Pre fans. The 5,000-meter race was vicious, furious, and Pre wasn’t at his best, everyone could see that. Shorter led going into the last lap. But at the last possible moment, in the last two hundred yards, Pre did what Pre always did. He dug down deep. With Hayward vibrating and swaying, he pulled away and won in 13:23.8, which was 1.6 seconds off his best time. Pre was most famous for saying, “Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.” Watching him run that final weekend of May 1975, I’d never felt more admiration for him, or identified with him more closely. Somebody may beat me, I told myself, some banker or creditor or competitor may stop me, but by God they’re going to have to bleed to do it. There was a postrace party at Hollister’s house. Penny and I wanted to go, but we had a two-hour drive back to Portland. The kids, the kids, we said as we waved good-bye to Pre and Shorter and Hollister.

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

  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. 1969Suddenly, a whole new cast of characters was wandering in and out of the office. Rising sales enabled me to hire more and more reps. Most were ex-runners, and eccentrics, as only ex-runners can be. But when it came to selling they were all business. Because they were inspired by what we were trying to do, and because they worked solely on commission (two dollars a pair), they were burning up the roads, hitting every high school and college track meet within a thousand-mile radius, and their extraordinary efforts were boosting our numbers even more. We’d posted $150,000 in sales in 1968, and in 1969 we were on our way to just under $300,000. Though Wallace was still breathing down my neck, hassling me to slow down and moaning about my lack of equity, I decided that Blue Ribbon was doing well enough to justify a salary for its founder. Right before my thirty-first birthday I made the bold move. I quit Portland State and went full-time at my company, paying myself a fairly generous eighteen thousand dollars a year. Above all, I told myself, the best reason for leaving Portland State was that I’d already gotten more out of the school—Penny—than I’d ever hoped. I got something else, too; I just didn’t know it at the time. Nor did I dream how valuable it would prove to be.

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

  I thanked Morimoto, assured him that Onitsuka wouldn’t regret its faith in me. I went around the table shaking everyone’s hand, bowing, and when I came back to Morimoto I gave his hand an extra-vigorous shake. I then followed a secretary into a side room, where I signed several contracts, and placed an order for a whopping thirty-five hundred dollars’ worth of shoes. I RAN ALL the way back to my hotel. Halfway there I started skipping, then leaping through the air like a dancer. I stopped at a railing and looked out at the bay. None of its beauty was lost on me now. I watched the boats gliding before a brisk wind and decided that I would hire one. I would take a ride on the Inland Sea. An hour later I was standing in the prow of a boat, wind in my hair, sailing into the sunset and feeling pretty good about myself. The next day I boarded a train to Tokyo. It was time, at last, to ascend into the clouds. ALL THE GUIDEBOOKS said to climb Mount Fuji at night. A proper climb, they said, must culminate with a view of sunrise from the summit. So I arrived at the base of the mountain promptly at dusk. The day had been muggy, but the air was growing cooler, and right away I rethought my decision to wear Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt, and Tigers. I saw a man coming down the mountain in a rubberized coat. I stopped him and offered him three dollars for his coat. He looked at me, looked at the coat, nodded. I was negotiating successful deals all over Japan! As night fell hundreds of natives and tourists appeared and began streaming up the mountain. All, I noticed, were carrying long wooden sticks with tinkling bells attached. I spotted an older British couple and asked them about these sticks. “They ward off evil spirits,” the woman said. “There are evil spirits on this mountain?” I asked. “Presumably.” I bought a stick. I then noticed people gathering at a roadside stand and buying straw shoes. The British woman explained that Fuji was an active volcano, and its ash and soot were guaranteed to ruin shoes. Climbers therefore wore disposable straw sandals. I bought sandals. Poorer, but properly outfitted at last, I set off. There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. Signs along the upward path, written in many languages, said there would be nine stations before the summit, each offering food and a place to rest. Within two hours, however, I’d passed Station 3 several times. Did the Japanese count differently? Alarmed, I wondered if thirteen western states might actually mean three?

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

  “We have here two conflicting stories,” he said, “and it’s the opinion of this court that Blue Ribbon’s is the more convincing.” Blue Ribbon has been more truthful, he said, not only throughout the dispute, as evidenced by documents, but in this courtroom. “Truthfulness,” he said, “is ultimately all I have to go on, to gauge this case.” He noted Iwano’s testimony. Compelling, the judge said. It would seem Kitami had lied. He then noted Kitami’s use of a translator: During the course of Mr. Kitami’s testimony, on more than one occasion, he interrupted the translator to correct him. Each time Mr. Kitami corrected him in perfect English. Pause. James the Just looked through his papers. So, he declared, it’s therefore my ruling that Blue Ribbon will retain all rights to the names Boston and Cortez. Further, he said, there are clearly damages here. Loss of business. Misappropriation of trademark. The question is, how to assign a dollar figure for those damages. The normal course is to name a special master to determine what the damages are. This I will do in the coming days. He slammed down his gavel. I turned to Cousin Houser and Strasser. We won? Oh my… we won . I shook hands with Cousin Houser and Strasser, then clapped their shoulders, then hugged them both. I allowed myself one delicious sidelong look at Hilliard. But to my disappointment he had no reaction. He was staring straight ahead, perfectly still. It had never really been his fight. He was just a mercenary. Coolly, he shut his briefcase, clicked the locks, and without a glance in our direction he stood and strolled out of the courtroom. WE WENT STRAIGHT to the London Grill at the Benson Hotel, not far from the courthouse. We each ordered a double and toasted James the Just. And Iwano. And ourselves. Then I phoned Penny from the pay phone. “We won!” I cried, not caring that they could hear me in all the rooms of the hotel. “Can you believe it—we won!” I called my father and yelled the same thing. Both Penny and my father asked what we’d won. I couldn’t tell them. We still didn’t know, I said. One dollar? One million? That was tomorrow’s problem. Today was about relishing victory. Back in the bar Cousin Houser and Strasser and I had one more stiff one. Then I phoned the office to find out the daily pair count. A WEEK LATER we got a settlement offer: four hundred thousand dollars. Onitsuka knew full well that a special master might come up with any kind of number, so they were seeking to move preemptively, contain their losses. But four hundred thousand dollars seemed low to me. We haggled for several days. Hilliard wouldn’t budge. We all wanted to be done with this, forever. Especially Cousin Houser’s overlords, who now authorized him to take the money, of which he’d get half, the largest payment in the history of his firm. Sweet vindication.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Me... in virgin-white... coming down a winding staircase... carrying a white bouquet!... and my family will be crying for joy.... And there will be champagne! cake! a real priest to puhfawm the Ceremony!—” She broke off abruptly, shutting her eyes deliriously as if to visualize the scene better. Then she opened them again, onto the frantic teeming world of Pershing Square.... “They will bust you again for sure if you have that wedding, Miss Destinée,” said Chuck gravely. “It would be worth it,” sighed Miss Destiny. “Oh, it would be worth it.” Then we noticed a welldressed man standing a few feet from us in the shadows, staring at us intently until he saw us looking back and he shifted his gaze, began to smoke, looked up furtively again. Miss Destiny smiled brightly at him, but he didnt smile back at her, and Miss Destiny said obviously he is a queer and so he must want a man. “So darlings, I will leave you to him and him to whomevuh eenie-meenie-miney he wants. But let me tell you, my dear—” me—confidentially “—that when they dress that elegantly around here, why, they will make all kinds of promises and give you oh two bucks,” and Chuck said oh no the score was worth at least twenty, and Miss Destiny laughs like Tallulah Bankhead, who is the Idol of all queens, and says in a husky voice, “Dalling, this is not your young inexperienced sistuh you are talkin to, this is your mothuh, who has been a-round.... Why, Miss Thing told me about this sweet stud kid going for a dollar!—... Ah, well, as my beloved sweet Juliet said, Parting is: such—sweet—sorrow—...” And she sighed now, being Juliet, then whispered to me loud enough for Chuck to hear, “There will be other times, my dear—when you are not Working.” And she moved away with peals of queenly laughter, flirting again, fluttering again, flamboyantly swishing, just as she had come on, saying hello to everyone: “Good evening, Miss Saint Moses, dear—...” spreading love, throwing kisses, bringing her delicate hands to her face, sighing, “Too Much!” after some goodlooking youngman she digs, glancing back at Chuck and me as the man moved out of the shadows, closer to us, jingling money. So there goes Miss Destiny leaving Pershing Square, all gayety, all happiness, all laughter. “I love you too, dear, ummmm, so much....” 3 I left the 1-2-3 and went to Ji-Ji’s bar—another malehustling and queen bar: but tougher.

• From Educated (2018)

  She’d noticed the hours I spent in my room with Tyler’s old boom box, listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so she began looking for a voice teacher. It took a few weeks to find one, and another few weeks to persuade the teacher to take me. The lessons were much more expensive than the dance class had been, but Mother paid for them with the money she made selling oils. The teacher was tall and thin, with long fingernails that clicked as they flew across the piano keys. She straightened my posture by pulling the hair at the base of my neck until I’d tucked in my chin, then she stretched me out on the floor and stepped on my stomach to strengthen my diaphragm. She was obsessed with balance and often slapped my knees to remind me to stand powerfully, to take up my own space. After a few lessons, she announced that I was ready to sing in church. It was arranged, she said. I would sing a hymn in front of the congregation that Sunday. The days slipped away quickly, as days do when you’re dreading something. On Sunday morning, I stood at the pulpit and stared into the faces of the people below. There was Myrna and Papa Jay, and behind them Mary and Caroline. They looked sorry for me, like they thought I might humiliate myself. Mother played the introduction. The music paused; it was time to sing. I might have had any number of thoughts at that moment. I might have thought of my teacher and her techniques—square stance, straight back, dropped jaw. Instead I thought of Tyler, and of lying on the carpet next to his desk, staring at his woolen-socked feet while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir chanted and trilled. He’d filled my head with their voices, which to me were more beautiful than anything except Buck’s Peak. Mother’s fingers hovered over the keys. The pause had become awkward; the congregation shifted uncomfortably. I thought of the voices, of their strange contradictions—of the way they made sound float on air, of how that sound was soft like a warm wind, but so sharp it pierced. I reached for those voices, reached into my mind—and there they were. Nothing had ever felt so natural; it was as if I thought the sound, and by thinking it brought it into being. But reality had never yielded to my thoughts before. The song finished and I returned to our pew. A prayer was offered to close the service, then the crowd rushed me. Women in floral prints smiled and clasped my hand, men in square black suits clapped my shoulder. The choir director invited me to join the choir, Brother Davis asked me to sing for the Rotary Club, and the bishop—the Mormon equivalent of a pastor—said he’d like me to sing my song at a funeral. I said yes to all of them. Dad smiled at everyone.

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

  As we neared the summit, the path grew narrow. I mentioned that it reminded me of a trail I’d hiked in the Himalayas. Sarah and the boyfriend stared. Himalayas? Now she was really impressed. And he was really put out. As the summit came slowly into view, the climb became tricky, treacherous. She seized my hand. “The Japanese have a saying,” her boyfriend shouted over his shoulder, to us, to everyone. “A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice.” No one laughed. Though I wanted to, at his Easter egg clothing. On the very top we came to a large wooden torii gate. We sat beside it and waited. The air was strange. Not quite dark, not quite light. Then the sun crept above the horizon. I told Sarah and her boyfriend that the Japanese place torii gates at sacral borderlands, portals between this world and the world beyond. “Wherever you pass from the profane to the sacred,” I said, “you’ll find a torii gate.” Sarah liked that. 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.”

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

  And despite our fears, despite the risks and downsides, going public was the best way to sustain growth. And yet, in the midst of those intense discussions, in the middle of one of the most trying years in the company’s history, those Buttface meetings were nothing but a joy. Of all those hours spent at Sunriver, not one minute felt like work. It was us against the world, and we felt damned sorry for the world. That is, when we weren’t righteously pissed off at it. Each of us had been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. Shunned by bosses, spurned by luck, rejected by society, shortchanged by fate when looks and other natural graces were handed out. We’d each been forged by early failure. We’d each given ourselves to some quest, some attempt at validation or meaning, and fallen short. Hayes couldn’t become a partner because he was too fat. Johnson couldn’t cope in the so-called normal world of nine-to-five. Strasser was an insurance lawyer who hated insurance—and lawyers. Woodell lost all his youthful dreams in one fluke accident. I got cut from the baseball team. And I got my heart broken. I identified with the born loser in each Buttface, and vice versa, and I knew that together we could become winners. I still didn’t know exactly what winning meant, other than not losing, but we seemed to be getting closer to a defining moment when that question would be settled, or at least more sharply defined. Maybe going public would be that moment. Maybe going public would finally ensure that Nike would live on. If I had any doubts about Blue Ribbon’s management team in 1976, they were mainly about me. Was I doing right by the Buttfaces, giving them so little guidance? When they did well I’d shrug and deliver my highest praise: Not bad. When they erred I’d yell for a minute or two, then shake it off. None of the Buttfaces felt the least threatened by me—was that a good thing? Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. It was the right tack for Patton and his GIs. But did that make it right for a bunch of Buttfaces? I worried. Maybe I should be more hands-on. Maybe we should be more structured. But then I’d think: Whatever I’m doing, it must be working, because mutinies are few. In fact, ever since Bork, no one had thrown a genuine tantrum, about anything, not even what they were paid, which is unheard of in any company, big or small. The Buttfaces knew I wasn’t paying myself much, and they trusted that I was paying them what I could. Clearly the Buttfaces liked the culture I’d created. I trusted them, wholly, and didn’t look over their shoulders, and that bred a powerful two-way loyalty. My management style wouldn’t have worked for people who wanted to be guided, every step, but this group found it liberating, empowering.

• From Educated (2018)

  She’d noticed the hours I spent in my room with Tyler’s old boom box, listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so she began looking for a voice teacher. It took a few weeks to find one, and another few weeks to persuade the teacher to take me. The lessons were much more expensive than the dance class had been, but Mother paid for them with the money she made selling oils. The teacher was tall and thin, with long fingernails that clicked as they flew across the piano keys. She straightened my posture by pulling the hair at the base of my neck until I’d tucked in my chin, then she stretched me out on the floor and stepped on my stomach to strengthen my diaphragm. She was obsessed with balance and often slapped my knees to remind me to stand powerfully, to take up my own space. After a few lessons, she announced that I was ready to sing in church. It was arranged, she said. I would sing a hymn in front of the congregation that Sunday. The days slipped away quickly, as days do when you’re dreading something. On Sunday morning, I stood at the pulpit and stared into the faces of the people below. There was Myrna and Papa Jay, and behind them Mary and Caroline. They looked sorry for me, like they thought I might humiliate myself. Mother played the introduction. The music paused; it was time to sing. I might have had any number of thoughts at that moment. I might have thought of my teacher and her techniques—square stance, straight back, dropped jaw. Instead I thought of Tyler, and of lying on the carpet next to his desk, staring at his woolen-socked feet while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir chanted and trilled. He’d filled my head with their voices, which to me were more beautiful than anything except Buck’s Peak. Mother’s fingers hovered over the keys. The pause had become awkward; the congregation shifted uncomfortably. I thought of the voices, of their strange contradictions—of the way they made sound float on air, of how that sound was soft like a warm wind, but so sharp it pierced. I reached for those voices, reached into my mind—and there they were. Nothing had ever felt so natural; it was as if I thought the sound, and by thinking it brought it into being. But reality had never yielded to my thoughts before. The song finished and I returned to our pew. A prayer was offered to close the service, then the crowd rushed me. Women in floral prints smiled and clasped my hand, men in square black suits clapped my shoulder. The choir director invited me to join the choir, Brother Davis asked me to sing for the Rotary Club, and the bishop—the Mormon equivalent of a pastor—said he’d like me to sing my song at a funeral. I said yes to all of them. Dad smiled at everyone.

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

  I leaned down, kissed Penny’s cheek. I pushed away her damp hair. “You’re a champion,” I whispered. She squinted, uncertain. She thought I was talking to the baby. She handed me my son. I cradled him in my arms. He was so alive, but so delicate, so helpless. The feeling was wondrous, different from all other feelings, though familiar, too. Please don’t let me drop him. At Blue Ribbon I spent so much time talking about quality control, about craftsmanship, about delivery—but this, I realized, this was the real thing. “We made this,” I said to Penny. We. Made. This. She nodded, then lay back. I handed the baby to the nurse and told Penny to sleep. I floated out of the hospital and down to the car. I felt a sudden and overpowering need to see my father, a hunger for my father. I drove to his newspaper, parked several blocks away. I wanted to walk. The rain had stopped. The air was cool and damp. I ducked into a cigar store. I pictured myself handing my father a big fat robusto and saying, “Hiya, Grandpa!” Coming out of the store, the wooden cigar box under my arm, I bumped straight into Keith Forman, a former runner at Oregon. “Keith!” I cried. “Heya, Buck,” he said. I grabbed him by the lapels and shouted, “It’s a boy!” He leaned away, confused. He thought I was drunk. There wasn’t time to explain. I kept walking. Forman had been on the famous Oregon team that set the world record in the four-mile relay. As a runner, as an accountant, I always remembered their stunning time: 16:08.9. A star on Bowerman’s 1962 national championship team, Forman had also been the fifth American ever to break the four-minute mile. And to think, I told myself, only hours ago I’d thought those things made a champion. FALL. THE WOOLEN skies of November settled in low. I wore heavy sweaters, and sat by the fireplace, and did a sort of self-inventory. I was all stocked up on gratitude. Penny and my new son, whom we’d named Matthew, were healthy. Bork and Woodell and Johnson were happy. Sales continued to rise. Then came the mail. A letter from Bork. After returning from Mexico City, he was suffering some sort of mental Montezuma’s Revenge. He had problems with me, he told me in the letter. He didn’t like my management style, he didn’t like my vision for the company, he didn’t like what I was paying him. He didn’t understand why I took weeks to answer his letters, and sometimes didn’t answer at all. He had ideas about shoe design, and he didn’t like how they were being ignored. After several pages of all this he demanded immediate changes, plus a raise.

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

  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. “Vixie—didn’t you get them?” Vixie looked perplexed. “Yes, I got them.” Bowerman took off his ball cap, put it back on, took it off. “Yeah, well,” he grumbled, “but you didn’t send the outer soles .” Johnson’s face reddened. “I sent those, too! Vixie?” “Yes,” Vixie said, “we got them.” Now we all turned to Bowerman, who was pacing, or trying to. There was no room. The office was dark, but I could still tell that my old coach’s face was turning red. “Well… we didn’t get them on time!” he shouted, and the tines of the rakes trembled. This wasn’t about uppers and outer soles. This was about retirement. And time. Like Pre, time wouldn’t listen to Bowerman. Time wouldn’t slow down . “I’m not going to put up with this bullshit anymore,” he huffed, and stormed out, leaving the door swinging open. I looked at Johnson and Vixie and Hollister. They all looked at me.

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

  Within two hours we had ourselves a deal. Four years later, in Los Angeles, the Chinese track-and-field team would walk into an Olympic stadium for the first time in nearly two generations wearing American shoes and warm-ups. Nike shoes and warm-ups. Our final meeting was with the Ministry of Foreign Trade. As with all previous meetings, there were several rounds of long speeches, mainly by officials. Hayes was bored during the first round. By the third round he was suicidal. He started playing with the loose threads on the front of his polyester dress shirt. Suddenly he became annoyed with the threads. He took out his lighter. As the deputy minister of foreign trade was hailing us as worthy partners, he stopped and looked up to see that Hayes had set himself on fire. Hayes beat on the flame with his hands, and managed to put it out, but only after ruining the moment, and the speaker’s mojo. It didn’t matter. Just before getting on the plane home we signed deals with two Chinese factories, and officially became the first American shoemaker in twenty-five years to be allowed to do business in China.

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

  She seized my hand. “The Japanese have a saying,” her boyfriend shouted over his shoulder, to us, to everyone. “A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice.” No one laughed. Though I wanted to, at his Easter egg clothing. On the very top we came to a large wooden torii gate. We sat beside it and waited. The air was strange. Not quite dark, not quite light. Then the sun crept above the horizon. I told Sarah and her boyfriend that the Japanese place torii gates at sacral borderlands, portals between this world and the world beyond. “Wherever you pass from the profane to the sacred,” I said, “you’ll find a torii gate.” Sarah liked that. 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.

• From Educated (2018)

  The scratch of pencils on paper, the clack of a projector moving to the next slide, the peal of the bells signaling the end of class—all were drowned out by the clatter of iron and the roar of diesel engines. After a month in the junkyard, BYU seemed like a dream, something I’d conjured. Now I was awake. My daily routine was exactly what it had been: after breakfast I sorted scrap or pulled copper from radiators. If the boys were working on-site, sometimes I’d go along to drive the loader or forklift or crane. At lunch I’d help Mother cook and do the dishes, then I’d return, either to the junkyard or to the forklift. The only difference was Shawn. He was not what I remembered. He never said a harsh word, seemed at peace with himself. He was studying for his GED, and one night when we were driving back from a job, he told me he was going to try a semester at a community college. He wanted to study law. There was a play that summer at the Worm Creek Opera House, and Shawn and I bought tickets. Charles was also there, a few rows ahead of us, and at intermission when Shawn moved away to chat up a girl, he shuffled over. For the first time I was not utterly tongue-tied. I thought of Shannon and how she’d talked to people at church, the friendly merriment of her, the way she laughed and smiled. Just be Shannon, I thought to myself. And for five minutes, I was. Charles was looking at me strangely, the way I’d seen men look at Shannon. He asked if I’d like to see a movie on Saturday. The movie he suggested was vulgar, worldly, one I would never want to see, but I was being Shannon, so I said I’d love to. I tried to be Shannon on Saturday night. The movie was terrible, worse than I’d expected, the kind of movie only a gentile would see. But it was hard for me to see Charles as a gentile. He was just Charles. I thought about telling him the movie was immoral, that he shouldn’t be seeing such things, but—still being Shannon—I said nothing, just smiled when he asked if I’d like to get ice cream. Shawn was the only one still awake when I got home. I was smiling when I came through the door. Shawn joked that I had a boyfriend, and it was a real joke—he wanted me to laugh. He said Charles had good taste, that I was the most decent person he knew, then he went to bed. In my room, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. The first thing I noticed was my men’s jeans and how they were nothing like the jeans other girls wore. The second thing I noticed was that my shirt was too large and made me seem more square than I was.

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

  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. “Vixie—didn’t you get them?” Vixie looked perplexed. “Yes, I got them.” Bowerman took off his ball cap, put it back on, took it off. “Yeah, well,” he grumbled, “but you didn’t send the outer soles.” Johnson’s face reddened. “I sent those, too! Vixie?”