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 Going Clear (2013)

  The audience, nearly all women, were in a near-hysterical state of anticipation even before Cruise came out on the stage, so his behavior has to be seen against a backdrop of a highly titillated screaming mass, to which he responded like a surfer catching a massive wave. He pumped his fist in the air and knelt on the floor. “ Something’s happened to you!” Winfrey exclaimed. “I’m in love!” he explained. “We’ve never seen you behave like this before!” “I know!” Cruise said, jumping backward onto her couch. Then he grabbed Winfrey’s hands and began wrestling with her. “You’re gone!” she kept saying. “You’re gone!” It was a scene of complete delirium. Cruise’s spectacular and highly public romance was overshadowing the promotion for War of the Worlds , the movie he had just made with Spielberg, which would be released the following month. A few weeks after the Winfrey show, Cruise did an interview with Today show host Matt Lauer as Holmes sat nearby. The questions were friendly, and Cruise seemed happy and relaxed until Lauer mentioned that Holmes had agreed to take up Scientology. “ At this stage in your life, could you be with someone who doesn’t have an interest?” Lauer asked. “You know, Scientology is something that you don’t understand,” Cruise responded. “It’s like, you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist, okay.” “So, it doesn’t replace religion,” Lauer offered. “It is a religion, because it’s dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being.” Lauer then asked about a comment that Cruise had recently made about actress Brooke Shields, who had written that antidepressants had helped her get through her postpartum depression. “I’ve never agreed with psychiatry—ever!” Cruise said. He was dressed in black, his muscular arms on display; he had a stubble beard and his hair was draped in bangs across his forehead. He radiated an athletic intensity and a barely contained fury. “As far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you’ve got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think, here’s a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo-science.” “But, Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressants or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn’t that enough? ” “Matt, you have to understand this,” Cruise said, glowering. “Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric-shocking people—okay, against their will—of drugging children with them not knowing the effect of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?” “The difference is—” “No, no, Matt.” “This wasn’t against her will, though.” “Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.” “But this wasn’t against her will.” “Matt, I’m asking you a question.” “I understand there’s abuse of all these things.” “No, you see, here’s the problem,” Cruise said.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I listened with my eyes closed, wondering if all people listened to music with words this way. When the last note played, I started my car and drove to the hospital fighting a smile. I’d expected something to strip me naked like the Florence Welch song had. The title and its tie to the great Oscar Wilde had been enough to make me smirk, but the words, which to anyone else fighting cancer would have felt insensitive, uplifted me. So gloriously morbid. I hit play and listened one more time, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel as I drove. I was sitting in the exam room in a hospital gown when Isaac walked in, followed by a nurse, Dr. Akela and the plastic surgeon I saw a few weeks earlier—I think his name was Dr. Monroe, or maybe it was Dr. Morton. Isaac was wearing black scrubs underneath his white lab coat. I had a moment to study him as he looked over my chart. Dr. Akela was smiling at me, standing almost too close to Isaac. Was that possession? Dr. Monroe/Morton looked bored. On television they called his kind Plastics. Finally, Isaac looked up. “Senna,” he said. Dr. Akela glanced up at him when he used my first name. I wondered if she was where he went missing to when he wasn’t with me. If I were a man, I’d go missing to Dr. Akela, too. She’d make a beautiful hiding place. Her sense was sight, I decided. Everything about her called loudly to the eyes: the way she moved, the way she looked, the way she spoke sentences with only her body. Isaac asked me to sit up. “We’re going to take a look.” He gently untied the back of my hospital gown and stepped away so I could lower it myself. I made myself feel nothing, staring straight ahead as the cold air touched my skin. “Lie back, Senna,” he said softly. I did. I focused on the ceiling as I felt his hands on me. He examined each breast, his fingers lingering around the lump on the right side. His touch was gentle, but professional. If anyone else had been touching me, I would have bolted upright and run straight out of the room. When he was done, he helped me sit up and retied my gown. I saw Dr. Akela watching him again. “Your labs look good,” he said. “Everything is set for the surgery next week. Dr. Montoll is here to talk to you about reconstruction.” Montoll! “And Dr. Akela would like to go over the radiation treatments with you.” “I won’t be needing to speak with Dr. Montoll,” I said. Isaac’s face jerked up from my chart. “You’ll want to discuss reconstruction of—” “No,” I said. “I don’t.” Dr. Montoll the Plastic stepped in, suddenly not looking quite as bored. “Ms. Richards, if we get the expanders in now, your reconstruction—”

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

  A son of so many prayers and tears could not be lost, and the faithful mother who travailed with him in spirit with greater pain than her body had in bringing him into the world,2149 was permitted, for the encouragement of future mothers, to receive shortly before her death an answer to her prayers and expectations, and was able to leave this world with joy without revisiting her earthly home. For Monica died on a homeward journey, in Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, in her fifty-sixth year, in the arms of her son, after enjoying with him a glorious conversation that soared above the confines of space and time, and was a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath-rest of the saints. She regretted not to die in a foreign land, because she was not far from God, who would raise her up at the last day. "Bury my body anywhere," was her last request, "and trouble not yourselves for it; only this one thing I ask, that you remember me at the altar of my God, wherever you may be."2150 Augustine, in his Confessions, has erected to Monica the noblest monument that can never perish. If ever there was a thorough and fruitful conversion, next to that of Paul on the way to Damascus, it was that of Augustine, when, in a garden of the Villa Cassiciacum, not far from Milan, in September of the year 386, amidst the most violent struggles of mind and heart—the birth-throes of the new life—he heard that divine voice of a child: "Take, read!" and he "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14). It is a touching lamentation of his: "I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty, so old and so new; I have loved Thee late! And lo! Thou wast within, but I was without, and was seeking Thee there. And into Thy fair creation I plunged myself in my ugliness; for Thou wast with me, and I was not with Thee! Those things kept me away from Thee, which had not been, except they had been in Thee! Thou didst call, and didst cry aloud, and break through my deafness. Thou didst glimmer, Thou didst shine, and didst drive away, my blindness. Thou didst breathe, and I drew breath, and breathed in Thee. I tasted Thee, and I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burn for Thy peace. If I, with all that is within me, may once live in Thee, then shall pain and trouble forsake me; entirely filled with Thee, all shall be life to me."

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Or maybe they were just lonely. Or maybe they didn’t know what they were feeling. I didn’t know what to feel. Who could understand my sister? After seven years of living in the basement and watching TV, after doing absolutely nothing at all, my sister decided she needed to change her life. I guess I’d kind of shamed her. If I was brave enough to go to Reardan, then she’d be brave enough to MARRY A FLATHEAD INDIAN AND MOVE TO MONTANA. “Where’d she meet this guy?” I asked my mother. “At the casino,” she said. “Your sister said he was a good poker player. I guess he travels to all the Indian casinos in the country.” “She married him because he plays cards?” “She said he wasn’t afraid to gamble everything, and that’s the kind of man she wanted to spend her life with.” I couldn’t believe it. My sister married a guy for a damn silly reason. But I suppose people often get married for damn silly reasons. “Is he good-looking?” I asked. “He’s actually kind of ugly,” my mother said. “He has this hook nose and his eyes are way different sizes.” Damn, my sister had married a lopsided, eagle-nosed, nomadic poker player. It made me feel smaller. I thought I was pretty tough. But I’d just have to dodge dirty looks from white kids while my sister would be dodging gunfire in beautiful Montana. Those Montana Indians were so tough that white people were scared of them. Can you imagine a place where white people are scared of Indians and not the other way around? That’s Montana. And my sister had married one of those crazy Indians. She didn’t even tell our parents or grandmother or me before she left. She called Mom from St. Ignatius, Montana, on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and said, “Hey, Mom, I’m a married woman now. I want to have ten babies and live here forever and ever.” How weird is that? It’s almost romantic . And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and imagination. Well, it also took some degree of mental illness, too, but I was suddenly happy for her. And a little scared. Well, a lot scared. She was trying to live out her dream. We should have all been delirious that she’d moved out of the basement. We’d been trying to get her out of there for years. Of course, my mother and father would have been happy if she’d just gotten a part-time job at the post office or trading post, and maybe just moved into an upstairs bedroom in our house. But I just kept thinking that my sister’s spirit hadn’t been killed. She hadn’t given up. This reservation had tried to suffocate her, had kept her trapped in a basement, and now she was out roaming the huge grassy fields of Montana. How cool!

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She smiled; presently the maid brought in the tea equipage, and I just huddled my clothes on, when in waddled my mistress. I expected no less than to be told of, if not chid for, my late rising, when I was most agreeably disappointed by her compliments on my pure and fresh looks. I was “a bud of beauty” (this was her style), “and how vastly all the fine men would admire me!” to all which my answers did not, I can assure you, wrong my breeding; they were as simple and silly as they could wish, and, no doubt, flattered them infinitely more than had they proved me enlightened by education and a knowledge of the world. We breakfasted, and the tea things were scarce removed, when in were brought two bundles of linen and wearing apparel: in short, all the necessaries for rigging me out, as they termed it, completely. Imagine to yourself, Madam, how my little coquet heart fluttered with joy at the sight of a white lutestring, flowered with silver, scoured indeed, but passed on me for spick and span new, a Brussels lace cap, braited shoes, and the rest in proportion, all second-hand finery, and procured instantly for the occasion, by the diligence and industry of the good Mrs. Brown, who had already a chapman for me in the house, before whom my charms were to pass in review; for he had not only, in course, insisted on a previous sight of the premises, but also on immediate surrendering to him, in case of his agreeing for me; concluding very wisely, that such a place as I was in, was of the hottest to trust the keeping of such a perishable commodity in, as a maidenhead. The care of dressing and tricking me out for the market, was then left to Phœbe, who acquitted herself, if not well, at least perfectly to the satisfaction of everything but my impatience of seeing myself dressed. When it was over, and I viewed myself in the glass, I was no doubt, too natural, too artless, to hide my childish joy at the change: a change, in the real truth, for much the worse, since I must have much better become the neat easy simplicity of my rustic dress than the awkward, untoward, tawdry finery that I could not conceal my strangeness to.

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

  We now return to the life of Basil. After finishing his studies in Athens he appeared in his native city of Caesarea as a rhetorician. But he soon after (A.D. 360) took a journey to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, to become acquainted with the monastic life; and he became more and more enthusiastic for it. He distributed his property to the poor, and withdrew to a lonely romantic district in Pontus, near the cloister in which his mother Emmelia, with his sister Macrina, and other pious and cultivated virgins, were living. "God has shown me," he wrote to his friend Gregory, "a region which exactly suits my mode of life; it is, in truth, what in our happy jestings we often wished. What imagination showed us in the distance, that I now see before me. A high mountain, covered with thick forest, is watered towards the north by fresh perennial streams. At the foot of the mountain a wide plain spreads out, made fruitful by the vapors which moisten it. The surrounding forest, in which many varieties of trees crowd together, shuts me off like a strong castle. The wilderness is bounded by two deep ravines. On one side the stream, where it rushes foaming down from the mountain, forms a barrier hard to cross; on the other a broad ridge obstructs approach. My hut is so placed upon the summit, that I overlook the broad plain, as well as the whole course of the Iris, which is more beautiful and copious than the Strymon near Amphipolis. The river of my wilderness, more rapid than any other that I know, breaks upon the wall of projecting rock, and rolls foaming into the abyss: to the mountain traveller, a charming, wonderful sight; to the natives, profitable for its abundant fisheries. Shall I describe to you the fertilizing vapors which rise from the (moistened) earth, the cool air which rises from the (moving) mirror of the water? Shall I tell of the lovely singing of the birds and the richness of blooming plants? What delights me above all is the silent repose of the place. It is only now and then visited by huntsmen; for my wilderness nourishes deer and herds of wild goats, not your bears and your wolves. How would I exchange a place with him? Alcmaeon, after he had found the Echinades, wished to wander no further."1949

• From Between Us

  Japanese students saw “more emotion” when the Japanese athlete was pictured with their teammates; for American students, it was the other way around. For Japanese, emotions were OURS; for Americans, they were MINE. Winning athletes arguably do not have a large range of emotions (they presumably won’t be sad!), but in another study, we found that Japanese students see OURS and Western students MINE emotions for a wider range of emotions. In the early 2000s, Phoebe Ellsworth, one of my mentors at the University at Michigan, asked me to list the cultural topics that I considered worthy of studying by emotion psychologists. I had become interested in the notion that Japanese conceive of their emotions as between people, rather than within. Ellsworth had a very creative graduate student, Taka Masuda, now himself a professor at the University of Alberta. Masuda was of Japanese origin, and my idea resonated with him. We started to collaborate. FIGURE 2.2 Japanese and American athletes (Copyright © 2008, American Psychological Association) Masuda designed and drew a cartoonish task, based on the classic paradigm of emotional perception tasks to which I referred in chapter 1. The stimulus material for this perception task showed one of two boys: a Caucasian boy whom we called Jon and an Asian boy to whom we referred as Taro. In each picture, Jon/Taro was depicted as having one of three emotions: happiness, anger, or sadness. Jon/Taro was surrounded by other people who also showed an emotion. In some of the pictures, the surrounding people’s emotions were the same as Jon’s, but in many cases, they were different. We asked our participants, U.S. American and Japanese college students, what the middle person (Jon or Taro) was feeling. FIGURE 2.3 Happy Jon/Taro with angry others Different from the earlier study with athletes, our study examined which emotions the participants perceived, not just how many. Asked what Jon or Taro felt, our American college students gauged Jon’s or Taro’s expression exclusively. If Jon (Taro) looked happy, they rated him to be happy. If Jon (Taro) looked angry, they rated him as angry; etc. American students perceived MINE emotions: their ratings were tied to the expression of the middle person. The Japanese college students saw OURS emotions. They looked at the middle person’s expression as well, but in contrast to our American participants, they also looked at the expressions of the other figures in the cartoon: The Japanese respondents rated Taro (or Jon) as happiest if the other people’s expressions were happy as well. They judged Taro (Jon) to be less happy when the other people in the picture looked angry, but moreover, they judged Taro (Jon) to be angrier in that case. To Japanese, the emotion was inferred from all the people in the picture; the emotion was not just inside the person—in Taro or Jon—but also in the other people in the picture.

• From Between Us

  My upbringing has seeped into the way I experience happiness as an adult. When my son Oliver’s baseball team played well (or the other team made mistakes in the his team’s favor), the happiness of the other mothers at the sideline seemed strong and undiluted. They cheered and celebrated without reservation. I too felt happy when my son’s team played well, but I would never have cheered in the same way, and in fact, I was concerned about hurting the feelings of the six- and seven-year- old boys on the other team, who also tried to play their best. My happiness was less blissful, and I was more reticent to cheer. This is just to say that we do not need to go to “exotic” cultures to find a different attitude towards—and a different experience of—happiness. And if Amsterdam still sounds exotic, then author Barbara Ehrenreich’s description of American settlers may bring home that happiness has not always been, and is not universally, sought out. The predecessor of America’s present culture of happiness was nothing short of an unhappiness culture: The Calvinism brought by white settlers to New England could be described as a system of socially imposed depression. Its God was “utterly lawless” . . . , an all-powerful entity who “reveals his hatred of his creatures, not his love for them. . . .” The task for the living was to constantly examine “the loathsome abominations that lie in his bosom,” seeking to uproot the sinful thoughts that are a sure sign of damnation. Calvinism offered only one form of relief from this anxious work of self-examination, and that was another form of labor— clearing, planting, stitching, building up farms and business. Anything other than labor of either industrious or spiritual sort—idleness or pleasure seeking—was a contemptible sin. We were not there to measure the everyday happiness of American settlers, but we have been able to compare everyday feelings of happiness in East Asian and contemporary white American cultures. To this end, psychologists have used a method called experience sampling, where they ask people several times a day how they are feeling. Using this method, we have found that Japanese and Asian American college students consistently report less happiness (and more unhappiness) than their white American counterparts. They experience happiness less often, and when they experience happiness, it is less intense. Clearly, then, the value attached to happiness has an effect on its prevalence in everyday life. But even if happiness is not cherished to the same extent, would it not be universally motivating? The answer is no. If happiness informs and facilitates action in WEIRD cultures, in the majority of the world’s cultures, people act according to their societal roles as well as the decisions and desires of others, rather than pursuing their own individual happiness.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Extremes, however, are always absurd, and I found myself amazed at the ridiculous level to which uncritical thought can sink. At one point in our training we were expected to learn how to administer various psychological tests, including intelligence tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or WAIS, and personality tests such as the Rorschach. My first practice subject was my husband, who, as an artist, not surprisingly scored off the top on the visual performance parts of the WAIS, frequently having to explain to me how to put the block designs together. His Rorschach responses were of a level of originality that I have not seen since. On the Draw-A-Person test I noticed that he seemed to be taking it very seriously, drawing meticulously and slowly what I assumed would be some kind of revealing self-portrait. When he finally showed the picture to me, however, it was a wonderfully elaborated orangutan whose long arms extended along the borders of the page. I thought it was marvelous and took the results of his WAIS, Rorschach, and Draw-A-Person to my psychological-testing supervisor. She was an entirely humorless and doctrinaire psychoanalyst who spent more than an hour interpreting, in the most fatuous and speculative manner, the primitive and repressed rage of my husband, his intrapsychic conflicts, his ambivalences, his antisocial nature, and his deeply disturbed personality structure. My now former husband, whom I have never, in almost twenty-five years, known to lie, was being labeled a sociopath; a man who was quite singularly straightforward and gentle was interpreted as deeply disturbed, conflicted, and filled with rage. All because he had done something different on a test. It was absurd. Indeed, it was so ridiculous to me that, after having giggled uncontrollably for quite a long while, thus provoking even further wrath—and, worse yet, further interpretations—I half stormed, half laughed my way out of her office and refused to write up the test report. This, too, needless to say, was obsessed over, dissected, and analyzed. Most of my real education came from the wide variety and large number of patients that I evaluated and treated during my predoctoral clinical internships. Along the way, I completed the course work for my two minor fields, psychopharmacology and animal behavior. I particularly loved studying animal behavior and supplemented the courses offered by the psychology department with graduate courses given by the zoology department. These zoology courses focused on the biology of aquatic mammals and covered not only the biology and natural history of sea otters, seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins, but also such esoterica as the cardiovascular adaptations made to diving by sea lions and whales and the communication systems used by dolphins. It was learning for learning’s sake, and I loved it. None of this had any relevance whatsoever to anything else I was studying or doing, nor to anything I have done since, but they were far and away the most interesting classes I took in graduate school.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Inevitably, the year passed: the snows and warming brandies of the English winter gave way to the soft rains and white wines of early summer. Roses and horses appeared in Hyde Park; gorgeous, diaphanous apple blossoms spread out over the black branches of the trees in St. James’s Park; and the long, still hours of summer light cast an Edwardian hue over the days just up to my parting. It had become difficult to remember my life in Los Angeles, much less to think about returning to the chaotic days of running a large university clinic filled with very sick patients, teaching, and seeing a full caseload of patients again. I was beginning to have doubts that I could remember the details of conducting a psychiatric history and examination, much less teaching others how to do it. I was reluctant to leave England, and even more reluctant to return to a city I had come to associate not only with a grueling academic career, but also with breakdowns, the worn, cold, bloodlessness following in their wake, and the draining charade of pretending to be well when I wasn’t and going through the motions of being pleasant when I felt dreadful. I was, however, very wrong in my forebodings. The year had served as far more than just a restful interlude; it had been, in fact, truly restorative. Teaching was once again fun; supervising the clinical work of the residents and interns was, as it had been in earlier times, a pleasure; and seeing patients gave me the opportunity to try to put into practice some of what I had learned from my own experiences. Mental exhaustion had taken a long, terrible toll, but, strangely, it was only in feeling well, energetic, and high-spirited again that I had any true sense of the toll taken.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The sore was, however, too tender, the wound too bleeding fresh, for Charles’s good-nature to put my patience presently to another trial; but as I could not stir, or walk a-cross the room, he ordered the dinner to be brought to the bed side, where it could not be otherwise than my getting down the wing of a fowl, and two or three glasses of wine, since it was my adored youth who both served, and urged them on me, with that sweet irresistible authority with which love had invested him over me. After dinner, and everything but the wine was taken away, Charles very impudently asks a leave, he might read the grant of in my eyes, to come to bed to me, and accordingly falls to undressing; which I could not see the progress of without strange emotions of fear and pleasure. He is now in bed with me the first time, and in broad day; but when thrusting up his own shirt and my shift, he laid his naked glowing body to mine... oh insupportable delight! oh! superhuman rapture! what pain could stand before a pleasure so transporting? I felt no more the smart of my wounds below; but, curling round him like the tendril of a vine, as if I feared any part of him should be untouched or unpressed by me, I returned his strenuous embraces and kisses with a fervour and gust only known to true love, and which mere lust never rise to.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The plea of love then over-ruling all objections, for him, which he could not but read the sincerity of in a heart ever open to him, obliged me to receive his hand, by which means I was in pass, among other innumerable blessings, to bestow a legal parentage on those fine children you have seen by this happiest of matches. Thus, at length, I got snug into port, where, in the bosom of virtue, I gathered the only uncorrupt sweets: where, looking back on the course of vice I had run, and comparing its infamous blandishments with the infinitely superior joys of innocence, I could not help pitying, even in point of taste, those who, immersed in gross sensuality, are insensible to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even PLEASURE has not a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus temperance makes men lords over those pleasures that intemperance enslaves them to: the one, parent of health, vigour fertility cheerfulness, and every other desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility, barrenness, self-loathing, with only every evil incident to human nature. You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, extracted from me by the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if one was to fancy one’s self completely disguised at a masquerade, with no other change of dress than turning one’s shoes into slippers; or, as if a writer should think to shield a treasonable libel, by concluding it with a formal prayer for the King.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  There then I laid down in my clothes, and fell fast asleep, and had now enjoyed, by guess, about an hour’s rest, when I was pleasingly disturbed by my new and favourite gallant, who, enquiring for me, was readily directed where to find me. Coming then into my chamber, and seeing me lie alone, with my face turned from the light towards the inside of the bed, he, without more ado, just slipped off his breeches, for the greater ease and enjoyment of the naked touch; and softly turning up my petticoats and shift behind, opened the prospect of the back avenue to the genial seat of pleasure; where, as I lay at my side length, inclining rather face downward, I appeared full fair, and liable to be entered. Laying himself gently down by me, he invested me behind, and giving me to feel the warmth of his body, as he applied his thighs and belly close to me, and the endeavours of that machine, whose touch has something so exquisitely singular in it, to make its way good into me. I awaked pretty much startled at first, at seeing who it was, disposed myself to turn to him, when he gave me a kiss, and desiring me to keep my posture, just lifted up my upper thigh, and ascertaining the right opening, soon drove it up to the farthest: satisfied with which, and solacing himself with lying so close in those parts, he suspended motion, and thus steeped in pleasure, kept me lying on my side, into him, spoon-fashion, as he termed it, from the snug indent of the back part of my thighs, and all upwards, into the space of the bending between his thighs and belly; till, after some time, that restless and turbulent inmate, impatient by nature of longer quiet, urged him to action, which now prosecuting with all the usual train of toying, kissing, and the like, ended at length in the liquid proof on both sides, that we had not exhausted, or at less were quickly recruited of last night’s draughts of pleasure in us.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In short, his figure showed riper, greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in his tender youth; and now he was not much more than two and twenty. In this interval, however, I picked out of the broken, often pleasingly interrupted account of himself, that he was, at that instant, actually on his road to London, in not a very paramount plight or condition, having been wrecked on the Irish coast for which he had prematurely embarked, and lost the little all he had brought with him from the South Seas: so that he had not till after great shifts and hardships, in the company of his fellow-traveller, the captain, got so far on his journey; that so it was (having heard of his father’s death and circumstances,) he had now the world to begin again, on a new account: a situation, which he assured me, in a vein of sincerity, that flowing from his heart, penetrated mine, gave him to farther pain, than that he had not his power to make me as happy as he could wish. My fortune, you will please to observe, I had not entered upon any overture of, reserving, to feast myself with the surprise of it to him, in calmer instants. And, as to my dress, it could give him no idea of the truth, not only as it was mourning, but likewise in a style of plainness and simplicity that I had ever kept to with studied art. He pressed me indeed tenderly to satisfy his ardent curiosity, both with regard to my past and present state of life, since his being torn away from me: but I found means to elude his questions, by answers that shewing his satisfaction at no great distance, won upon him to waive his impatience, in favour of the thorough confidence he had in my not delaying it, but for respect I should in good time acquaint him with. Charles, however, thus returned to my longing arms, tender, faithful, and in health, was already a blessing too mighty for my conception: but Charles in distress!... Charles reduced, and broken down to his naked personal merit, was such a circumstance, in favour of the sentiments I had for him, as exceeded my utmost desire; and accordingly I seemed so visibly charmed, so out of time and measure pleased at his mention of his ruined fortune, that he could account for it no way, but that the joy of seeing him again had swallowed up every other sense of concern. In the mean time, my woman had taken, all possible care of Charles’s travelling companion; and as supper was coming in, he was introduced to me, when I received him as became my regard for all of Charles’s acquaintance or friends.

• From Between Us

  Our migrant middle school students in Belgium in many cases were from immigrant families, spoke the heritage culture at home, yet went to Belgian schools, where some of them had white Belgian friends. They are part of the majority culture, and at the same time, they spend a substantial part of their time in immigrant communities. It is possible that biculturals who often switch between two (or more) cultures are no longer aware that they do. With practice, we may dance the waltz to waltz music, and tune in to the tango music when it is playing; we may do so without noticeable effort. For instance, some Japanese Americans may adopt a MINE model when interacting in majority American contexts, and an OURS model of emotions in their Japanese homes. Engaging in the relationships that are situated in one cultural context or the other may prompt the associated ways of doing emotions. There is some research suggesting that biculturals do the “right” emotions in the right context. Remember that happiness and unhappiness are intimately connected in many East Asian cultures? Individuals in East Asian contexts often report the co-occurrence of the two. This is not so in European American culture, where by default, happiness means that you are not unhappy. In one study, East Asian Canadian undergraduate students were found to report different patterns of emotions depending on whether they identified more with Western culture, or more with Asian culture. The study monitored these students’ emotions for ten consecutive days. In situations where the East Asian Canadian students felt Western (or spoke English), they felt happiness at the expense of unhappiness; however, when they identified Asian (or spoke an Asian language), happiness and unhappiness co-occurred. Overall, the students were no less unhappy in situations where they identified as Western than in situations where they identified as Asian, but the co-occurrence patterns of happy and unhappy feelings did differ depending on their identification. Research with Korean American and Turkish Belgian immigrants by Jozefien De Leersnyder, Heejung Kim, and I similarly showed that immigrant emotions are more acculturated in public spaces that are likely associated with Western culture than in the private space which tends to be non-Western. The emotion profiles of the immigrant groups were more similar to the respective majority groups at work or school than at home. Emotion profiles differed by cultural context. It is possible that the emotion profiles differed because immigrants encountered different types of interpersonal situations in public spaces versus at home. If they were more happy in public spaces, perhaps the reason was they encountered more (or fewer) situations that elicited happiness. For example, I might have been more “happy” after I immigrated to the U.S., because people in the U.S. create so many opportunities for happiness by celebrating you and giving you compliments.

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

  The Magyars, belonging to the Turanian family of nations, and allied to the Finns and the Turks, penetrated into Europe in the ninth century, and settled, in 884, in the plains between the Bug and the Sereth, near the mouth of the Danube. On the instigation of the Byzantine emperor, Leo the Wise, they attacked the Bulgarians, and completely defeated them. The military renown they thus acquired gave them a new opportunity. The Frankish king Arnulf invoked their aid against Swatopluk, the ruler of the Moravian empire. Swatopluk, too, was defeated, and his realm was divided between the victors. The Magyars, retracing their steps across the Carpathian range, settled in the plains around the Theiss and the Danube, the country which their forefathers, the Huns, once had ruled over, the, present Hungary. They were a wild and fierce race, worshipping one supreme god under the guise of various natural phenomena: the sky, the river, etc. They had no temples and no priesthood, and their sacrifices consisted of animals only, mostly horses. But the oath was kept sacred among them, and their marriages were monogamous, and inaugurated with religious rites. The first acquaintance with Christianity the Magyars made through their connections with the Byzantine court, without any further consequences. But after settling in Hungary, where they were surrounded on all sides by Christian nations, they were compelled, in 950, by the emperor, Otto I., to allow the bishop of Passau to send missionaries into their country; and various circumstances contributed to make this mission a rapid and complete success. Their prince, Geyza, had married a daughter of the Transylvanian prince, Gyula, and this princess, Savolta, had been educated in the Christian faith. Thus Geyza felt friendly towards the Christians; and as soon as this became known, Christianity broke forth from the mass of the population like flowers from the earth when spring has come. The people which the Magyars had subdued when settling in Hungary, and the captives whom they had carried along with them from Bulgaria and Moravia, were Christians. Hitherto these Christians had concealed their religion from fear of their rulers, and their children had been baptized clandestinely; but now they assembled in great multitudes around the missionaries, and the entrance of Christianity into Hungary looked like a triumphal march.133

• From Between Us

  Uchida decided to study the phenomenon more systematically. She started by analyzing the very interviews that had inspired her, and counted how often and when Japanese and Americans mentioned emotions. These were broadcast interviews held right after the athletes had competed, and in that sense, very comparable moments for the Japanese and the American athletes. When interviewers asked the athletes directly how they felt, Japanese and American athletes did not differ in the number of the emotions they reported. But when the interviewer asked a question about other people (relatives, coaches, or friends), something Japanese interviewers did more than American interviewers, the Japanese but not the American athletes’ responses contained emotions. For example, to the question “What kind of support has your family given you?” a Japanese athlete responded, “My family always supported me, such as calling me a lot. I am really happy to meet the expectations of my family.” In contrast, an American athlete responded: “My family always supported me. My mother has always encouraged me.” Though athletes in both cultures were able to talk about their emotions, Japanese reported many more emotions in the context of relationships. Could it just be a difference of convention? Do Japanese simply learn to talk about emotions when asked about their relationships with others? In a separate study, Uchida and her colleagues showed Japanese and American college students pictures of winning athletes—either a Japanese or an American athlete. The athlete was pictured by themselves or with three teammates. And when did the students perceive that the athlete felt more emotion? Japanese students saw “more emotion” when the Japanese athlete was pictured with their teammates; for American students, it was the other way around. For Japanese, emotions were OURS; for Americans, they were MINE. Winning athletes arguably do not have a large range of emotions (they presumably won’t be sad!), but in another study, we found that Japanese students see OURS and Western students MINE emotions for a wider range of emotions. In the early 2000s, Phoebe Ellsworth, one of my mentors at the University at Michigan, asked me to list the cultural topics that I considered worthy of studying by emotion psychologists. I had become interested in the notion that Japanese conceive of their emotions as between people, rather than within. Ellsworth had a very creative graduate student, Taka Masuda, now himself a professor at the University of Alberta. Masuda was of Japanese origin, and my idea resonated with him. We started to collaborate. [image file=image_rsrc2M4.jpg] Figure 2.2 Japanese and American athletes (Copyright © 2008, American Psychological Association)

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As I kept hesitating and disconcerted under this soft distraction, Charles, with a fond impatience, took the pains to undress me; and all I can remember amidst the nutter and discomposure of my senses, was, some flattering exclamation of joy and admiration, more specially at the feel of my breasts, now set at liberty from my stays, and which panting and rising in tumultous throbs, swelled upon his dear touch, and gave it the welcome pleasure of finding them well formed, and un-failed in firmness. I was soon laid in bed, and scarce languished an instant for the darling partner of it, before he was undressed and got between the sheets, with his arms clasped round me, giving and taking, with gust inexpressible, a kiss of welcome, that my heart rising to my lips stamped with its warmest impression, concurring to my bliss, with that delicate and voluptuous emotion which Charles alone had the secret to excite, and which constitutes the very life, the essence of pleasure. Mean while, two candles lighted on a side-table near us, and a joyous wood fire, threw a light into the bed, that took from one sense, of great importance to our joys, all pretext for complaining of its being shut out of its share of them; and, indeed, the sight of my idolized youth was alone, from the ardour with which I had wished for it, without other circumstance, a pleasure to die of. But as action was now a necessity to desires so much on edge as ours, Charles, after a very short prelusive dalliance, lifting up my linen and his own, laid the broad treasures of his manly chest close to my bosom, both beating with the tenderest alarms: when now, the sense of his glowing body, in naked touch with mine, took all power over my thoughts out of my own disposal, and delivered up every faculty of the soul to the sensiblest of joys, that affecting me infinitely more with my distinction of the person, than of the sex, now brought my heart deliriously into play: my heart, which, eternally constant to Charles, had never taken any part in my original sacrifices to the calls of constitution, complaisance, or interest.

• From Between Us

  When I tried to call alumni, I often found that they had already been contacted by this other person. . . . She was worried about me, and she might have thought I was unreliable. She is a very strong person. Perhaps I am not that strong; I tend to worry that my phone calls will come at an inconvenient time, so I find it really hard to decide when to call these alumni. . . . She must have thought that she’d rather make those phone calls herself than asking me to do it. Hiroto finds out that not only is he being criticized, but his critic had actually been doing his job. Hiroto is annoyed, he tells us, but he maintains harmony within the organizing committee; relational harmony is highly valued in Japanese cultural contexts. Perhaps Hiroto even suppresses his initial feelings of anger or annoyance; he does not say. But at any rate, he does what the situation requires from him: as a committee member he meets the social obligation of getting along and maintaining harmony. Hiroto does what the majority of our fifty Japanese interviewees told us they did in emotional episodes of anger: they tried to understand the perspective of the other person (i.e., their fellow committee member), and simply adjusted. According to their own reports, they did nothing else, even if they felt strongly. “Doing nothing” was far more frequent among Japanese respondents in “anger” situations than any type of aggression or assertiveness, or even than moving away. Although acceptance was not the term Hiroto used for this, what his response has in common with the Thai Buddhist family of Sen and with the Utku Inuit hosts of anthropologist Jean Briggs is that they did what needed to be done, and their feelings mostly followed. The emotion was outside in. Another example from our interviews illustrates the outside-in emotions well. Chiemi, a twenty-year-old Japanese student who lives with her grandparents, tells us she always tries to be home on time for dinner. Recently though, she has joined an extracurricular activity for which she stays out late a couple of days a week. When she mentions to her grandparents that she will be late that night, they complain that she is “never on time.” Chiemi is annoyed about this exaggeration, but she tries to understand her grandparents: They must be worrying; they surely mean well; they care about her. When the interviewer asks her what she does or tells her grandparents, Chiemi answers she never mentions to them that she is annoyed: How can I say . . . I want to say “I want to have more fun, I want to have fun until late at night.”

• From Between Us

  And Juan, a twenty-seven-year-old restaurant worker who had been in the United States for eight years, was happy that, four years earlier, he had been able to help his wife getting through the birth of their first son: My presence counted a lot at the time my son was born and my wife was kind of nervous since it was her first baby. My presence was important so everything would turn out right. . . . “Keep going” was all I said for the time being, but she would answer: “I can’t”. . . . Some of my friends had already told me about the situation I was going to be in. Right? I tried to do things correctly, to be calm and to keep motivating my wife during those moments . . . and that is how it happened. At the time, what we were going through . . . there were not enough translators . . . and it was not our language . . . I did the best I could with what I knew . . . I felt [different] things at the same time, I felt bad but later on . . . something very . . . great happiness. What I felt like doing at that time was to be near my family; be with them, and I did that. Juan is happy because he was able to support his wife; his happiness is about connectedness. In fact, when the Latinx interviewer asks Juan if the situation increased his self-esteem, Juan replies he does not understand the question very well. Only when the interviewer highlights the connection with his wife, does Juan understand: Interviewer: The fact that you were there during that difficult time with your wife, does it make you feel more respect for yourself, where you feel more . . . Juan: Yes, because I think that it is nice to know that you are important to other people. Even happiness about your own achievement is about earning respect in the eyes of others. The esteem from others is what simultaneously makes you feel good in general, and makes you feel good about yourself. Luisa, a forty-two-year-old farmworker who had come to the United States eight years earlier, managed to repair the tractor that she used to sow the fields. Some of the men were not able to do the job, and so I had to do it. . . . The boss congratulated me, and said it would be great if he had other people like me. I told my husband what he had said, and so he congratulated me too, he said, “this is my old lady.” And that made me feel good.