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 While You Were Out (2023)

  Now, eleven months after we’d left Wilmette, Holmer was yanking us back there in a hurry. The new school year would be starting soon. With no time to spare, he went house hunting on his own and bought a prairie-style bungalow in Wilmette about a mile from our old neighborhood. Maybe all this ping-ponging between New York and Chicago was doing my mother in. MY MOTHER LOVED OUR NEW Wilmette neighborhood, but she hated the house. The kitchen’s too small, and this stucco looks cheap, she sighed when she walked through the front door for the first time. She had been hoping for something grander like the house she’d grown up in, a brick French provincial with a winding staircase and pocket doors. As far as I was concerned, we were in heaven. Just like at school, the 1200 block of Greenwood Avenue was crawling with kids, most from big Catholic families like ours. The Binders across the street had six kids. The Clohisys on the corner had ten. The Meskills on the other corner had only five kids but made up for it by having a skating rink in the backyard and a blackboard in their basement. Maureen, the youngest, even had her own nun outfit. We turned cartwheels on our front lawns, played Wiffle ball until the streetlights came on, and then switched to Ghosts in the Graveyard, darting from tree to tree and crouching behind the bushes until our mothers hollered for us to come inside. One neighbor was a pediatrician; another, a surgeon. So, if we fell out of a tree or crashed our bikes, we just hobbled across the street and one or the other of them would patch us up in no time. Frazier Thomas, host of Garfield Goose and Friends, a popular kids’ television show, lived next door, and his daughter, Kitty, became one of my best friends. Our houses were so close together that I suggested we try to shake hands leaning out of our respective bedroom windows. Living so close to such a celebrity gave me instant cachet with the kids at school. Frazier Thomas puts ketchup on his scrambled eggs, I announced with great authority on the playground one afternoon. The seeds of my reporting career were already being sown as I learned how to leverage my insider knowledge for playdates. The mighty elms that lined our redbrick street formed a kind of leafy cathedral ceiling. Many nights, I lay in bed and stared out the window, pretending that the branches were the arms of God holding us tight. Since my mother had disappeared again, I’d been having trouble sitting still at my desk and cried easily. If you use up all your tears now, Margaret, you won’t have any left for when you really need them, Sister Mary Assisi said. Better to save them for when a tiger starts chasing you through the jungle. Tigers! Sister knew about the tigers. What did she know about my mother?

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  I’m very happy to report that Phil is presently pursuing a career in music. For Every Lock There Is a Key In my intervention with Phil, I built rapport, used goal-oriented techniques of communication, and developed models of his identity. I also deliberately tried to get Phil to look at his situation from another perspective. I then intentionally applied the keys to the remaining locks of his mind control, and he responded positively. These keys can often reach into the deepest levels of a person, beneath any mind control virus, into the hardware of their real self. Phil’s sudden collapse into cathartic sobbing and surrounding his pain and guilt of his twin’s sudden death was his key. The changes these keys unlock can be profound. Key #4: Put the Person in Touch With Their Real Identity When a person begins to remember who they were before becoming a cult member, I am able to re-anchor them to a time when there was no cult identity and, consequently, no mind control. I enable the person to review what they thought and felt at each stage of the recruitment process. Almost always, the person had significant doubts or questions at the time, but these were long ago suppressed. It is within this pre-cult personality that I can learn exactly what the person needs to see, hear or feel in order to walk away from the group. For some people, this can be seeing how their leader misinterprets the Bible. For others, it may be to learn about the cult leader’s criminal background and dealings. For still others, it is to be shown specific contradictions within the group’s doctrine. Contradictions in the leader’s biography can also be pivotal. For instance, Scientology’s creator, Ron Hubbard, claimed in My Philosophy, issued in 1965, that he had been lamed with ‘physical injuries to hip and back’ and ‘blinded with injured optic nerves’ at the end of WWII, but this is contradicted by a 1957 lecture, where he claimed to have won a fight against three petty officers, only two weeks before the war finished.176 The question, “How will you know when it’s time for you to leave the group?” can help to reveal that individual’s bottom-line criterion. Will they leave if God tells them to? Will they leave if they discover that they’ve been lied to? As soon as a member can tell me explicitly what they would need to know to leave the group, then I can try my best to find them the proof they require.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  4. Communal Rhythms and SynchronyFrom the moment of our birth, our relationships are embodied in responsive faces, gestures, and touch. As we saw in chapter 7, these are the foundations of attachment. Trauma results in a breakdown of attuned physical synchrony: When you enter the waiting room of a PTSD clinic, you can immediately tell the patients from the staff by their frozen faces and collapsed (but simultaneously agitated) bodies. Unfortunately, many therapists ignore those physical communications and focus only on the words with which their patients communicate. The healing power of community as expressed in music and rhythms was brought home for me in the spring of 1997, when I was following the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In some places we visited, terrible violence continued. One day I attended a group for rape survivors in the courtyard of a clinic in a township outside Johannesburg. We could hear the sound of bullets being fired at a distance while smoke billowed over the walls of the compound and the smell of teargas hung in the air. Later we heard that forty people had been killed. Yet, while the surroundings were foreign and terrifying, I recognized this group all too well: The women sat slumped over—sad and frozen—like so many rape therapy groups I had seen in Boston. I felt a familiar sense of helplessness, and, surrounded by collapsed people, I felt myself mentally collapse as well. Then one of the women started to hum, while gently swaying back and forth. Slowly a rhythm emerged; bit by bit other women joined in. Soon the whole group was singing, moving, and getting up to dance. It was an astounding transformation: people coming back to life, faces becoming attuned, vitality returning to bodies. I made a vow to apply what I was seeing there and to study how rhythm, chanting, and movement can help to heal trauma. We will see more of this in chapter 20, on theater, where I show how groups of young people—among them juvenile offenders and at-risk foster kids—gradually learn to work together and to depend on one another, whether as partners in Shakespearean swordplay or as the writers and performers of full-length musicals. Different patients have told me how much choral singing, aikido, tango dancing, and kickboxing have helped them, and I am delighted to pass their recommendations on to other people I treat. I learned another powerful lesson about rhythm and healing when clinicians at the Trauma Center were asked to treat a five-year-old mute girl, Ying Mee, who had been adopted from an orphanage in China. After months of failed attempts to make contact with her, my colleagues Deborah Rozelle and Liz Warner realized that her rhythmical engagement system didn’t work—she could not resonate with the voices and faces of the people around her. That led them to sensorimotor therapy.[25]

• From American Swing (2008)

  WHY EVEN PRETEND THAT YOU DIDN'T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE A GOOD TIME WHEN YOU WERE SEXUALLY INVOLVED? Dodson: THE WHOLE THING WITH PLATO'S IS THAT YOU WOULD WALK INTO THIS SPACE, AND WHETHER OR NOT YOU HAD SEX WITH ANYONE WAS REALLY NOT THE POINT. THE POINT WAS IS THAT EVERYBODY THERE WAS WILLING TO BE NUDE, AVAILABLE MAYBE FOR SEX AND OPEN. SEX WITH ANOTHER MAN IS A FANTASY OF MINE. I'M SOMEONE ELSE. IT'S AN EGO TRIP. I THINK THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. IT'S AN EGO TRIP HAVING SOME OTHER MAN, OTHER THAN MY HUSBAND, TELLING ME "YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL. YOU'RE GOOD IN BED." ALL THIS, YOU KNOW? IT'S REALLY A FANTASY FOR ME. AND IT ALSO FELT LIKE YOU HAD A SECRET, THAT YOU HAD A SECRET WORLD THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE EITHER GOING TO WORK OR JUST GOING ABOUT THEIR BUSINESS IN THE CITY THAT THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT YOU HAD EXPERIENCED. AGAIN, IT'S NOT JUST SEX. IT'S NOT GOING IN THERE AND SAY, "I'M GOING IN THERE 'CAUSE I JUST WANT TO GRAB SOMEBODY AND I WANNA..." CAN I SAY CERTAIN WORDS? OKAY. "...GET LAID." I WAS A SOCIAL WORKER IN 1978. BUT I HAD GOOD EVENINGS AFTER MY SOCIAL WORK. ♪ OH, HOW HAPPY ♪ ♪ YOU HAVE MADE ME ♪ ♪ OH, HOW HAPPY ♪ ♪ YOU HAVE MADE ME ♪ ♪ I HAVE KISSED YOUR LIPS ♪ ♪ A THOUSAND TIMES... ♪ Van Peebles: I REMEMBER ONCE, THIS COUPLE-- I'M SURE THEY'VE BEEN THROWN OUT OF EVERY SWINGERS CLUB IN THE WORLD BECAUSE THEY WERE SO LARGE. THEY HAD TO WEIGH 300 LBS EACH. AND THEY WERE JITTERBUGGING. THEY WERE DANCING. THEY HAD ON THEIR TOWELS. THEY HAD TO HAVE DOUBLE TOWELS AROUND THEM. AND THE TOWELS, OF COURSE, FELL OFF. AND THEN NOBODY GAVE A DOO-DOO-CACA. BUT WHAT HAPPENED WAS-- IT WAS WHEN THEY STOMPED, THEY WERE SHAKING THE-- THE-- THE-- THE PLATTERS FOR THE DJ BECAUSE THEY WEIGHED SO MUCH. I MEAN, THEY WERE SHAKING THE WHOLE DAMN FLOOR. BUT IT WAS-- NOBODY CARED. IT WAS REALLY VERY VERY NICE. THIS WAS LARRY LEVENSON'S CASTLE. PLATO'S RETREAT WAS THE WAY THAT LARRY COULD EMBRACE EVERYBODY AND-- AND-- EXUDE HIS GENEROSITY, HIS BOUNTY. FAMILY TOGETHERNESS TODAY AT A PLACE CALLED PLATO'S RETREAT. THIS AFTERNOON THE OWNER HELD AN OPEN HOUSE THERE FOR CHILDREN. IN MOST CASES IT WAS A FAMILY AFFAIR AT PLATO'S TODAY... Michael Levenson: THE FIRST TIME I ACTUALLY WENT TO THE CLUB, THE CLUB WAS CLOSED. MY FATHER USED TO RUN, LIKE, HOLIDAY PARTIES-- MEMORIAL DAY, LABOR DAY. HE WOULD ACTUALLY RENT THE BIG BUS, HAVE IT PARKED AT MY HIGH SCHOOL. I WOULD INVITE 40 OF MY BEST FRIENDS. - Woman: DO YOU MIND THAT YOUR MOTHER COMES HERE? - NO, I DON'T CARE. HE HAD A DISCO AND THERE WAS A GAME ROOM THERE.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  This is amazing, like someone is holding my heart just so it can beat with a little more ease, the warmth of his body spreading into mine. I have so much to learn about intimacy, I am like an infant learning language. I thought I was unaffectionate and didn’t like being touched – Michael always used to marvel at how affectionate I was with our kids when I seemed to physically recoil from everyone else around me – but I do like it, in fact I feel a kind of unexpected peace and comfort wash over me. As #4 hugs me, I can feel him growing hard against me. We don’t attempt small talk, he simply takes my hand and together we walk up the stairs to his room. He nods toward the bed, telling me he washed his bedding in anticipation of my arrival. I love that he considered this, overcoming his bachelor ways to present me with a clean duvet. He takes his robe off and underneath it his body ripples with finely tuned muscles that thrill me all over again. I am wearing a maxi dress with a halter top that miraculously does not require a bra, so I simply roll it from the top all the way down my body, revealing that all I have on underneath is a pale pink lace thong, which I step out of. “Cool dress,” he says. “Easy access,” I say. “You’ve had a tough couple of weeks,” he says. “You need some TLC. Roll over.” I do as instructed, settling on my stomach and hoping my bare ass is smooth and not sporting the unsightly bumpy rashes I often get from the Peloton bike that is otherwise keeping my ass in tip-top shape. He straddles my legs while his strong hands knead my shoulders and work their way down my back. A good massage may be the only physical pleasure that I still think is better than sex, and I allow my body to sink down under the pressure of his hands. He takes his time, rubbing and pressing my muscles all the way down to my feet and then working his way back up again, the movements turning into strokes as his hands arrive between my legs. He teases me, touching my upper thighs and getting close to my lips and then pulling away again. My breath turns shallow, and finally, when I think I may come just like this, I wriggle myself forward until I can flip over and then tell him that I need him inside of me right away. When he enters me, I dig my nails into his butt cheeks, pulling him into me as deeply as he can go, and I sigh with gratitude that my urgent need to be filled up has been met. We come together and I am in awe that we can get our timing just right. He slides to the side of me and we lie holding each other.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “I really needed that.” We are quiet for a few minutes, neither fully awake nor asleep, and then a Cure song from the ’80s comes on the radio, which I say I love, and soon we have gone into our phones to play each other some of our most beloved ’80s songs, from Yaz and Bon Jovi and The Clash and R.E.M. We talk about school dances and our college days, our families and the challenges of being a single parent. My mouth drops open when he tells me that on nights he has his kids, he feeds them packets of ramen noodles or boxes of Kraft mac and cheese. I tell him I know he can do better and promise to send him some simple, no-fail recipes. As the sky outside begins to fade, he asks if I’m hungry but assures me he’s not offering anything from his understocked pantry. I pause and look down at his penis, which is soft against his thigh, and pause as I ponder it. The skin along the shaft is smooth and looks like a hood and I startle to realize this is the first uncircumcised penis I have ever seen. It reminds me of a turtle inside its shell and when I now touch it, running the edge of my nail along the shaft, it hardens until it has emerged from its shell. I am too shy to do what I really want, which is to tell him this is my first close-up with an uncircumcised penis, and to more closely examine it, so I settle for another round of sex and then agree we can go eat dinner. He asks if I want to take a shower; I guess the washcloth clean-up was a first-time customer special only. Remembering that I am going right from him to #3 and scrubbing myself clean of one man before I see the next seems like the polite thing to do, I head to his daughter’s bathroom to use her shower while he gets into the shower in his bathroom. We drive into town for dinner, to a restaurant that he insists has the best steak, and we stand in the dimly lit hallway to the dining room as we wait for the host to set a table. We gaze at each other with playful smiles; he looks to his left and then to his right and seeing no one coming, leans across the hallway to give me a quick kiss. When we sit at the small table, he takes the candle, vase and the salt and pepper shakers from the center of the table, moving each object one at a time to the table next to ours, and then reaches across the now-empty space for my hands, which he holds. There is something boyish and endearing about him, his gestures intentional and confident. “Oh, I almost forgot!” I say excitedly.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I shower while he shaves in front of the bathroom mirror and we hurriedly dress and say goodbye, as he heads off to a meeting and I go in search of coffee that will be strong enough to wake me up. * I have always thought that my birthday, which falls over Labor Day weekend, is perfectly placed on the calendar, that I am lucky to celebrate another year of my life in synchronicity with summer getting one last hurrah. Usually we are away on our annual summer vacation in Cape Cod and I wake up to handmade cards and gifts from Michael and the kids: rocks and seashells that have been painted, small gifts wrapped in aluminum foil, breakfasts in bed that the kids eat themselves while I sip from a mug of coffee. Michael would let me sleep late and in the afternoon would corral the kids so that I could have an hour or two to read on the beach by myself, and later, as the sun set, we would eat lobsters and drink cheap white wine at a no-frills clam shack. Summer got a proper send-off while I got another year added to my age, awash in the love of the family I had created. This year, as I turn 48 years old, there will be no family holiday. Daisy is away at school and holidays are from the last era of our family life, but Hudson and Georgia pull through. Hudson gives me a deck of playing cards with a note on the front that says “52 things I love about you”, and every card contains a note scrawled in Sharpie: you laugh at all of my jokes, you laugh at all of your own jokes, you make me food when I’m hungry and even when I think I’m not hungry, you let me play my music in the car, you always listen to me, you are strong, I know how much you love me. It is the best gift I’ve ever received, and I embarrass him and worry Georgia when I start crying as I flip through the deck. This is enough , I think to myself, more than enough . My parents arrive later, bearing a cooler filled with food my mother has cooked for me: an Asian shrimp salad with mint and lime juice, a poached salmon with thin lemon slices lining the top, fresh bread and bright red tomatoes from her garden. For dessert, in another cooler, are four pints of ice cream they procured from my favorite farm stand. There is enough food here for at least a dozen people, but there’s just the five of us. I know my mother is worried about me – her forced cheer is determined not to let in one sad thought of the way things used to be on my birthday – and I am matching her efforts with my own so that she doesn’t have to worry.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  That means, of course, not quite and completely the real and basically maybe just barber Wenzel in papa's fur turned inside out; but as far as a servant Ruprecht is at all possible, he was, and this year Hanno again, genuinely shaken and only interrupted once or twice by a nervous and half-unconscious sob, said his Lord's Prayer, whereupon he reached into the sack for the good children was allowed to do, which the old man then forgot to take with him at all ... The holidays began and the moment passed quite happily when papa read the certificate that also had to be issued at Christmas time ... The large hall was already mysteriously locked, marzipan and brown cakes had already been put on the table, already it was Christmas out in the city. Snow fell, frost came, and in the In the sharp, clear air, the familiar or melancholy melodies of the Italian barrel-organ men, who had come to the festival in their velvet jackets and black mustaches, rang out through the streets. The Christmas exhibitions were resplendent in the shop windows. The colorful amusements of the Christmas market were set up around the high Gothic fountain in the market square. And wherever you went, you breathed in the aroma of the festival with the scent of the fir trees for sale. Then finally the evening of the twenty-third of December came, and with it the giving of presents in the hall at home, in the Fischergrube, a giving of presents in the closest circle, which was only a beginning, an opening, a prelude, because the consul kept Christmas Eve tight Possessed for the whole family, so that in the late afternoon of the twenty-fourth the entire Thursday dinner party, along with Jürgen Kröger from Wismar and Therese Weichbrodt with Madame Kethelsen, gathered in the landscape room. Dressed in heavy gray and black striped silk, with flushed cheeks and flushed eyes, in a delicate scent of patchouli, the old lady received the guests who came in one by one, and her golden bracelets jingled softly at the wordless embraces. She was in unspeakable, silent and trembling excitement that evening. "My God, you're feverish, mother!" said the senator when he arrived with Gerda and Hanno... "Everything can be quite easy." But she whispered, while kissing all three: "In honor of Jesus...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  In a little dress, whose lavish trimmings with satin bows showed Frau Permaneder's taste, the child sat on the arm of his mother, held his thumbs in his tiny fists, sucked his tongue, stared straight ahead with his eyes protruding slightly and let go now and then a short, creaking sound was heard, whereupon the girl let it rock a little. But Hanno sat quietly on his stool at his mother's feet, looking up at a prism of the chandelier just like her... Christian was missing! Where was Christian? It was only now, at the last moment, that it was noticed that he wasn't there yet. The Consul's movements, the peculiar manipulation with which she used to stroke from the corner of her mouth to her hairdo, as if she were putting a fallen hair back in its place, became even more feverish... She hurriedly instructed Mamsell Severin, and the maid made her way past the choirboys the portico, between the house arms across the corridor, and knocked at Mr. Buddenbrook's door. Immediately Christian appeared. He came very leisurely into the landscape room with his thin, crooked legs, which had become somewhat lame since the joint rheumatism, rubbing his bald forehead with his hand. "Gosh, kids," he said, "I almost forgot!" "You should have..." his mother repeated, and froze... "Yes, almost forgot that it's Christmas today... I was sitting and reading... in a book, a travel book about South America... Good God, I've had other Christmases..." he added, just about to start the tale of one Christmas Eve, which he spent in London in a fifth-order ding-dong, when suddenly the stillness of the church in the room began to have an effect on him, so that he went to his seat with a wrinkled nose and on tiptoe. "Daughter Zion, rejoice!" sang the choirboys, and they, who had just been out there playing allotria so audibly that the senator had had to stand at the door for a moment to command respect, they sang beautifully. These clear voices, carried by the deeper organs, soaring pure, jubilant and praising, drew all hearts with them, softened the old maids' smiles and made the old people look inward and reconsider their lives, while those who were in the midst of life forgot their troubles for a while. Hanno let go of his knee, which he had been hugging so far. He looked quite pale, playing with the fringes of his stool and rubbing his tongue on a tooth, with his mouth half open and an expression as if he were cold. Now and then he felt the need to breathe a sigh of relief, because now, there the singing, this bell -like a cappella song filled the air, his heart clenched in an almost painful happiness. Christmas ...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Then she pushed the glasses on her nose, She read the familiar words slowly, with a simple, heartfelt intonation, in a voice that was clear, moving, and serene against the reverent silence. "And goodwill to the people!" she said. But she had scarcely been silent when the three voices in the columned hall rang out "Silent Night, Holy Night," which the family joined in in the landscape room. One went to work a little cautiously, because most of those present were unmusical, and here and there one heard a deep and quite inappropriate tone in the ensemble ... But that did not affect the effect of this song ... Frau Permaneder sang it with trembling lips, because the cutest and it touches his heart most painfully, who has had an eventful life behind him and looks back in the brief peace of the ceremony... Madame Kethelsen wept quietly and bitterly, although she heard almost nothing of anything. And then the Consul rose. She took the hand of her grandson Johann and that of her great-granddaughter Elisabeth and walked across the room. The old gentlemen followed, the younger ones followed, in the columned hall the servants and the house poor joined them, and while everyone chanted "O Tannebaum" in unison and Uncle Christian in the front made the children laugh by lifting his legs as he marched like a jumping jack and sillyly singing "O Tantebaum," blinded eyes and a smile on your face, you were pulled through the wide-open, tall double doors straight into the sky. The whole hall, filled with the scent of singed fir branches, shone and glittered with innumerable small flames, and the sky-blue wallpaper with its white statues of gods made the large room appear even brighter. The flames of the candles that covered the huge fir tree between the dark red curtained windows, which, adorned with silver tinsel and large white lilies, a shimmering angel at its top and a plastic nativity scene arrangement at its feet, towered almost to the ceiling, flickered in the general flood of light like distant stars. For on the white-covered table, which stretched long and wide, laden with gifts, from the windows almost to the door, a row of smaller trees hung with sweets continued, which also shone with burning wax lights. And the arms of gas that came out of the walls were burning, and the big candles were burning on the gilded candelabra in all four corners. Large objects, gifts that didn't fit on the table, stood side by side on the floor. Smaller tables, also covered in white, with gifts and decorated with burning trees, were located on the sides of the two doors: these were the presents for the servants and the house poor.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Singing, dazzled and completely alienated from the familiar room, one walked around the hall, filed past the manger in which a wax Child Jesus seemed to be making the sign of the cross, and then, after one had caught a glimpse of the individual objects, remained silent in one's place stand. Hanno was completely confused. Soon after entering, his feverishly searching eyes had caught sight of the theatre... a theatre, which, as it was emblazoned up there on the table, seemed of such extreme size and breadth as he had never dared to imagine. But his place had changed, he was in the opposite place from the previous year, and this caused Hanno, in his amazement, to seriously doubt whether this fabulous theater was meant for him. On top of that, at the foot of the stage, on the floor, was something large and strange, something that wasn't on his wish list, a piece of furniture, a dresser-like object... was it for him? "Come here, child, and look at this," the Consul said, opening the lid. "I know you like to play chorales... Herr Pfühl will give you the necessary instructions... You always have to pedal... sometimes lighter and sometimes harder... and then don't raise your hands, just change fingers bit by bit..." It was a harmonium, a small, pretty harmonium, polished brown, with metal handles on both sides, brightly colored pedal bellows, and a dainty swivel chair. Hanno struck a chord...a soft organ sound broke out, making the bystanders look up from their presents...Hanno hugged his grandmother, who tenderly hugged him and then left him to accept the thanks of the others. He turned to the theater. The harmonium was an overwhelming dream, but he hadn't yet had time to deal with it more closely. It was the abundance of happiness, in which one, ungrateful to the individual, only touches everything briefly in order to first learn to survey the whole... Oh, there was a prompter box, a shell-shaped prompter box, behind which the curtain rolled up, wide and majestic in red and gold. The scenery of the last Fidelio act was set up on the stage. The poor prisoners folded their hands. Don Pizarro, with his sleeves enormously puffed, paused somewhere in a terrible attitude. And from behind the minister approached at a rapid pace and all in black velvet, to sweep everything for the best. It was like the Stadttheater and almost even nicer. The chorus of jubilation, the finale, resounded in Hanno's ears, and he sat down in front of the harmonium to play a piece of it that he kept... But he got up again to pick up the book, the desired book of the Greek mythology, bound all red and bearing a golden Pallas Athena on the lid.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  He ate from his plate of confectionery, marzipan and brown cake, Now Mamsell Severin and the maid went about with tea and biscuits, and while Hanno was diving he found a little leisure to look up from his seat. People stood at the table or walked back and forth, chatting and laughing while showing each other gifts and admiring those of the other. There were objects of all materials: porcelain, nickel, silver, gold, wood, silk and cloth. Large brown cakes, symmetrically decorated with almonds and sweets, lay in long rows on the table, alternating with solid marzipan loaves, which were wet inside with freshness. The gifts that Mrs. Permaneder had made or decorated, a work bag, a stand for leafy plants, a foot cushion, were adorned with large satin bows. Now and then you would visit little Johann, put your arm around his sailor's collar and examine his gifts with the ironically exaggerated admiration with which one is wont to marvel at the glories of children. Only Uncle Christian knew nothing of this grown-up arrogance, and his Enjoying the puppet theater as he strolled past Hanno's place with a diamond ring on his finger that his mother had given him was no different from his nephew's. "Gosh, that's funny!" he said, raising and lowering the curtain and stepping back to study the scene. "Is that what you wished for? - So, that's what you wanted," he said suddenly, after letting his eyes wander for a while with strange seriousness and full of restless thoughts. "Why? How do you get the idea? Have you ever been to the theatre?… At Fidelio? Yes, that is given well... And now you want to imitate it, eh? imitate, perform operas yourself?... Did it make such an impression on you?... Listen, child, let me advise you, just don't get your thoughts too attached to such things... Theater... and stuff like that... That's no good, believe your uncle. I've always been way too interested in these things, and that's why I didn't become much. He pointed this out to his nephew seriously and urgently, while Hanno looked up at him curiously. Then, however, after a pause, during which his bony and wasted face brightened in contemplation of the theatre, he suddenly caused a figure to move forward on the stage, and sang in a hollow, croaking and trembling voice, "Ha, what a dreadful crime!" whereupon he pushed the armchair of the harmonium in front of the theater, sat down and began to perform an opera by alternately performing the movements of the conductor and the actors, singing and gesticulating. Several family members gathered behind his back, laughing, shaking their heads and enjoying themselves. Hanno watched him with genuine pleasure. But after a while, quite surprisingly, Christian broke off. he fell silent "Yes, you see, it's over now," he said; “Now comes the punishment again. It always takes revenge immediately when I allow myself a joke. It's not pain, you know, it's torment...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  a vague torment, because all the nerves are short here. They're all just too short..." But the relatives took these complaints just as little seriously as his jokes and hardly answered. They scattered indifferently, and so Christian sat silently in front of the theater for a while, looked at it with quick, thoughtful blinks, and then got up. "Well, kid, have fun with that," he said, stroking Hanno's hair. 'But not too much . . . and don't forget about your serious work, do you hear? I've made a lot of mistakes... But now I want to go to the club... I'm going to the club for a bit!' he called to the adults. “They celebrate Christmas there too. Goodbye.” And with stiff, crooked legs he walked away through the portico. Everyone had lunch earlier than usual today and therefore helped themselves extensively with tea and biscuits. But one was hardly done when large crystal bowls filled with a yellow, grainy porridge were passed around for snacking. It was almond cream, a mixture of eggs, ground almonds, and rose water, which tasted wonderful, but which, if you took a spoonful too much, caused the most terrible stomach trouble. Nevertheless, and although the consul asked "to leave a small hole open" for supper, there was no compulsion. As for Klothilde, she performed miracles. Silently and gratefully, she spooned up the almond cream as if it were buckwheat groats. For refreshment there was also wine jelly in glasses, which was eaten with English Plumkake. Hanno was left alone in the hall because little Elisabeth Weinschenk had been taken home, while he was allowed to stay in Mengstrasse for supper for the first time this year; gifts, and Ida Jungmann chatted with Riekchen Severin in the columned hall, although, as a governess, she usually kept a strict social distance from the maid. The lights of the great tree had burned down and were extinguished, so that the crib now lay in darkness; but a few candles on the small trees on the table were still burning, and here and there a twig came within reach of a little flame, scorched and crackled, and intensified the scent that pervaded the hall. Each breeze that touched the trees made the pieces of tinsel gold attached to them tremble with a delicate metallic sound. It was now quiet enough again to hear the faint sounds of a barrel organ coming from a distant street through the cold evening. Hanno enjoyed the Christmas scents and sounds with devotion. He read his mythology book with his head in his hand, ate mechanically and because it was necessary, confectionery, marzipan, almond cream and plumkake, and the anxious trepidation of a full stomach mingled with the sweet excitement of the evening to a wistful bliss.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Finally, one of the most effective ways for couples to expand their knowledge about what turns them on is to remind each other of past encounters together that were particularly pleasing. There’s only one pitfall to avoid. If your reminiscences come primarily from an earlier, more passionate phase in your relationship, you might set yourselves up for unfavorable comparisons with your current sex life. Make a point of emphasizing specific recent encounters. With rare exceptions, even couples who think their sex lives are a complete mess can point to at least some pleasurable moments, thereby highlighting the fact that they have a positive foundation on which to build. CULTIVATING WARM SEXMy observations have consistently revealed an apparent contradiction: to preserve opportunities for lusty, passionate sex, most successful long-term couples develop the ability to enjoy “warm sex.” Rather than emphasizing focused intensity, warm sex revolves around calmer experiences of sensuality, affection, pleasure, and playful fun. Although warm sex usually includes genital stimulation, its goals are neither high arousal nor orgasm. Especially during periods when desire is relatively low, warm sex allows couples to maintain a physical bond and helps them to continue perceiving each other in a sexual light. In my work, I have regularly been reminded of how crucial this is. In fact, I haven’t seen a couple—nor have any of the colleagues I’ve informally surveyed—who were able to rebuild a sexual connection after they had stopped thinking of each other in an erotic way for five or more years. Some people have great difficulty learning to enjoy warm sex, while others gravitate to it naturally. As a sex therapist I often encounter men and women who think of warm sex as boring sex—or no sex at all—and therefore avoid it or become frustrated when it doesn’t always lead to intercourse. Men are often troubled by warm sex because it doesn’t necessarily generate sufficient erotic energy to produce or sustain an erection. Unfortunately, heterosexual and gay male couples typically think the firmness of the penis is the indicator of how well things are going, an idea inimical to enduring sexual satisfaction. In addition to its other rewards, warm sex maintains an erotic playground. The passion of new love is typically an automatic catalyst for sex. As the urgency calms, however, seasoned lovers make time for sex, an obvious fact proclaimed so often by marriage counselors that it now borders on cliché. But if you want to sustain a happy sex life over time, this is one cliché you can’t afford to ignore. When erotic couples evolve out of the heat of limerence, it’s crucial that they find ways of keeping sex a priority—not just in concept but in fact.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  An excellent example of this can be seen in the recent phenomenon of the Indian spiritual teacher Amma, who is known as the "hugging saint." Literally thousands of people in locations around the world wait for as long as ten hours to receive a three-second hug from her, and sometimes also a few flower petals or a Hershey's chocolate kiss shoved into their hands.' Amma is considered by her devotees to be an avatar, a deity come to Earth, a once-in-a-thousand-year occurrence. Estimates are that she has hugged "somewhere between 25 and 30 million people so far."9 After the fleeting hug, devotees leave in tears. Whether they are crying from ecstasy or exhaustion, many believe they have had a spiritual experience. Charisma, of course, is not necessarily nefarious. Famous actors and musicians have charisma, as do many athletes and business leaders as well. Charisma is a fascinating phenomenon that often evokes positive responses. Corrupt charismatic cult leaders, however, will use this complex interpersonal phenomenon in ways that are self-serving and, at times, destructive to others. The combination of charisma and certain personality disorders (such as sociopathy) is a lethal mixture-perhaps it is the very recipe used at the Cookie-Cutter Messiah School. For a cult leader, charisma is perhaps most useful during the early stages of cult formation. It takes a strong-willed and persuasive leader to convince people of a new belief, and then gather the newly converted around him as devoted followers. A misreading of a cult leader's so-called personal charisma will foster his adherents' belief in his divine or messianic qualities. Charisma is indeed desirable for someone who wishes to attract a following. However, like beauty, charisma is in the eye of the beholder. Mary, for example, may be completely taken with a particular workshop leader, practically swooning at his every word, while her friend Susie doesn't feel the slightest tingle. When a person is under the sway of charisma, the effect seems quite real. Yet charisma is nothing more than a worshipful reaction to an idealized figure in the mind of the smitten. When just one person is smitten, a charismatic leader is born. When more than one person feels that same way, a charismatic group may begin to take shape. In the long run, persuasive skills (which may or may not be charismatic) are more important to the longevity of a cult than is the leader's charisma. The power and hold of cults is dependent on the environment or social system shaped by the thought-reform program, the influence and control mechanisms, and the captivating tenets of the belief system-all of which are usually conceptualized and put in place by the leader. The leader's trusted inner circle or top lieutenants, of course, aid in this process. Some inner-circle members achieve "charisma by proxy"; that is, because they are the leader's confidantes, they carry the authority of the leader.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Some parents feel guilty if they take time away from the kids to focus on their relationship. Couples need to remind themselves that their connection is the core of the family and cultivating it is, in the long run, one of the best things they can do for their children. By the time kids are able to entertain themselves with a minimum of supervision they should also be able to grasp the concept of Mom and Dad having private times when they are not to be interrupted (except, of course, for emergencies). A lock on the bedroom door is essential. A playful sign such as, “Do not disturb. Mommy and Daddy snuggling” is not only a practical help but also communicates positive messages about sensuality and affection—the best sex education there is. SUSTAINING AND BUILDING ATTRACTIONOne of the key challenges of long-term loving is how to keep attraction alive. Attraction tends to be stimulated most strongly by the new, the unfamiliar, or the unattainable—all features that decrease with day-to-day living. How then do erotic couples maintain their mutual appeal? Years of observing and questioning have led me to conclude that, while no simple answers exist, there are two basic strategies. The first is to stay in touch with the original attractions that brought you together in the first place. The second involves recognizing new sources of attraction as the relationship evolves. Most erotic couples rely on a combination of both. Regardless of the specific problems that bring them to therapy I always ask couples what first drew them to each other. Not only does the ensuing discussion provide me with valuable background information, it also gives them an opportunity to focus on crucial memories that may have been overshadowed by more recent conflicts and concerns. Erotic couples make a point of remembering their original attractions because they realize that even small remnants of these attractions can be powerful aphrodisiacs. For instance, passionate lovers focus on specific physical features that continue to be arousing, even when both of their bodies may have seen better days. This is a positive manifestation of the lusty objectification many people find objectionable. Erotic couples are also aware that attraction is inspired by much more than the physical, so they also pay careful attention to the behaviors and attitudes that turn them on. At least as important as recognition of attractive features is the ability to bolster your partner’s sense of attractiveness by making affirmative statements about him or her and to accept and value your partner’s perceptions of you. Thelma and Max: That look

• From My Secret Garden (1973)

  IIThere are some types of fantasies that I’ve shared with others that have not found their way into print. This is no criticism of this book, for it does not claim to be a definitive encyclopedia of female sexual fantasies, but rather an attempt to show the range and variation of such material. One common fantasy left out is that in which the fantasizer thinks of herself as part of a machine, as an animal, as having the body of a man, as some creature from another world, as insect, or as God, or a part of the Buddha, or the petal on a lotus. Many fantasies of this type occur under the influence of psychedelic agents (marijuana, hashish, mescaline, psilocybin) and are accompanied by exquisite sexual pleasure. So “real” are these fantasies that one truly becomes them—is not aware enough of “self” to realize that a fantasy is occurring until after the orgasm, which is often explosive and felt, seemingly, in every cell of the body. IIIWhile I feel quite strongly that the fantasizer ought to allow herself to accept, enjoy, and fully give herself over to her reverie, I also feel a word is in order lest non-fantasizers feel self-conscious over their lack of reverie. One should no more feel pressured to produce fantasies than be encouraged to avoid them. It is, for example, quite possible and quite “normal” to be totally free of fantasy while making love. There are states in which a man or a woman may be so lost in bodily sensations that not only are daydreams absent but such people could not tell you where or who they are at that moment. This is not to say that such sexual experiences are better or worse—merely that they are different. Finally, it is my belief that our interest in matters sexual—be it as critic or defender—is related to something far more basic and inclusive than deciding whether stimuli are “decently erotic,” “pornographic,” “perverse,” “scientific,” and so on. Whatever we are attracted by, we are always looking, exploring, thinking. These are the constants. And these three constants have to do, I think, with the never-ending, unsolvable, and therefore always intriguing questions of creation and ego transcendence. How is it that motion and friction upon a small part of the body can make people for a moment oblivious of themselves, can cause—what the French refer to the orgasm as—le petit mort (the little death)? If we are intrigued by the sexual appendages of the world, what could be more natural? We were all sired by an ejaculating penis, grew in the womb, passed through the vaginal vault, emerged between the labia, were nourished at a breast, and will most likely re-create again when we perform the rites of procreation ourselves. That the mysteries of life, death (ego transcendence), and intense pleasure are so closely linked with our sex organs is what, to my mind, makes these organs objects of perpetual curiosity. My Secret Garden allows an important aspect of this natural curiosity to emerge from a locked closet. The bigger “secret,” however, remains. Endnotes1 Hari Dass Baba2 The 400-odd biographies and descriptions of the women do seem rather “average.” No social or economic groups predominate. Ms. Friday has gotten a balanced sampling with the one exception that her subjects admit that they fantasize.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  I didn’t have a real or fake animal, and so I just sweated as we went around the room. When it got to me, I burped out otter. Which was a form of true. It was important to me back then to feel, to be wily. To feel small, slick, quick, amphibious, dexterous, capable. I didn’t know then Barthes’s book The Neutral, but if I had, it would have been my anthem—the Neutral being that which, in the face of dogmatism, the menacing pressure to take sides, offers novel responses: to flee, to escape, to demur, to shift or refuse terms, to disengage, to turn away. The otter was thus a complex sort of stand-in, or fake-out, another identity I felt sure I could shimmy out of. But whatever I am, or have since become, I know now that slipperiness isn’t all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, of persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one’s work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again—not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life. “Many people doing all kinds of work are able to take pleasure in aspects of their work,” Sedgwick once wrote, “but something different happens when the pleasure is not only taken but openly displayed. I like to make that different thing happen.” One happy thing that can happen, according to Sedgwick, is that pleasure becomes accretive as well as autotelic: the more it’s felt and displayed, the more proliferative, the more possible, the more habitual, it becomes.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Proof that a romantic temperament can take root anywhere, because the only dancers I had seen were believers who jigged in the spirit. The men rolled out sections of canvas over the horizontal poles, attaching the cutout pieces to the base of the now-raised center poles. They laced the sections together and swarmed the flattened tent like a team of tiny tailors stitching a ball gown for a female colossus. With the sewing finished, a man was stationed at the winch attached to each of the seven center poles. Someone shouted, “Go!” and the men cranked in unison. The canvas rose around them, and when it reached waist height, crew members hunched over like gnomes, scrambled underneath, and pushed up the secondary poles. A few more cranks and the peaks billowed thirty feet in the air.With the tent secured, the crew hung spotlights and secondary lighting from the poles, hammered together the sections of the platform, unloaded the Hammond organ, and positioned the amplifiers and speakers. The expanse of the tent posed a challenge for the sound system, so it was important that the speakers be positioned in just the right places. The tent families unloaded stacks of wooden folding chairs and arranged them in orderly sections that fanned outward from the platform. Twenty-five hundred chairs for the first night, with a thousand more stacked in the truck to be squeezed in as needed throughout the revival. Long one-by-one boards were placed between the chairs’ legs to connect them and keep the rows uniform.By seven o’clock on opening night, a dusty brown canvas and a collection of scuffed-up poles had been transformed into an ad hoc cathedral. People came from near and far. Black and white, old and young, poor and poorer. Women with creased brows and apologetic eyes as faded as their cotton dresses, clutching two and three children who looked almost as worn out as their mothers. Men, taut as fiddle strings, hunch-shouldered in overalls or someone else’s discarded Sunday best, someone taller and better fed. They came to find a sense of purpose and a connection to God and one another. They came because the promises of the beatitudes were fulfilled for a few hours under the tent, and the poor were truly blessed. They came for miracles, answers, and salvation. They came to see the show.It was our first night in Chattanooga. Up on the platform, Mama pulsed out a bass line on the organ and Brother Cotton swung his arm through the air like a metronome as he led the audience through another chorus of “Jesus on the Mainline.” He yelled, “Call him up and call him up” into the microphone and the audience screamed back, “Tell him what you want.” Brother Cotton’s job as song leader and front man was to warm up the audience for Brother Terrell. Sometimes the crowd was cold and unresponsive, and he sweated through his undershirt and dress shirt just trying to get them to say amen.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I had my shorts on, but I didn’t want her to see me. My cock stuck out straight as a tentpole. We still had our ’51 Ford half-ton pickup then, so we set the tent and sleeping bags and mason jars that we had to take back to Aunt Lola and ax and shovel and tarp and first-aid kit in the back since it wasn’t going to rain. It was an incredibly beautiful morning, which is the way most summer mornings are around Spokane. There wasn’t a sound and the only smell was freshness. The streetlights were still on and the sky was graying into blue. I was stretching and yawning and growling and about fixing to give the neighborhood my Mountain Man good-morning yell when eleven-year-old Dwight Thuringer came whistling down the sidewalk with his newspapers. My hiding was totally unpremeditated. I just whipped into the big shrubs before he saw me. I didn’t decide to scare him until he got right to the porch and banged his paper off the screen door. I leaped out and threw my arms in the air and bellowed like a Sasquatch. Little Thuringer screamed and fell back on the lawn in a storm of neatly folded newspapers. He twitched a little and gurgled in his throat. I was rolling on the lawn, laughing out of control. Dwight was throwing papers at me as hard as he could when Carla came out. I was still laughing, rolling around, but I was trying to cover up my tender spots. Those square-folded papers hurt. When he got me right at the base of the skull, it sobered me up and I got to my feet and ran around behind the house. I heard Carla ask Dwight what happened. “Goddamn Louden jumped out and scared me,” he said. He sounded like he was ready to cry. I had climbed over the fence and come through the breezeway and out onto the lawn again. “God, I’m sorry, Dwight,” I said. “I just couldn’t help myself.” And then I started to laugh again. But then I saw he had peed his pants and it made me feel ashamed. Finally Dwight started to laugh, too. He began to pick up his papers and I helped him. “You really scared me,” he said. “I must have looked funny.” “You flew through the air,” I said, starting to guffaw again. Carla and I lifted his double bag over his head and brushed the dewy grass off him, ignoring the pee smell, and waved him good morning. I brushed the wet grass off my front and turned for Carla to brush my back. “You’re really a bastard,” she said, refusing to brush me. I asked her if she wanted to drive and she said she did. The old Ford had to be double-clutched, and Carla took a while to get the hang of the shifting. But once we got out on 395 she didn’t have to shift, so the ride was smoother.