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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  In the back of this cavernous Coliseum, someone began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Like waves of an ocean, people stood to sing, too. I saw a white man and woman from the Mississippi delegation, the group that had been elected as a state conference partly taken over by the Klan, reach across neighbors to hold hands and stand. By the second chorus, the observers in the bleachers and media were standing and singing, too. Even after the singing was over, people raised clasped hands above their heads and chanted, “It’s our movement now!” No one seemed to want this moment to end. I was surprised to find myself in tears. Because these women had trusted me to help as a writer, I began to see a way of bringing together two things—writing and activism—that until then had torn me apart in everyday life. From those two years on, I divided my life into Before and After. Before Houston, I had voted to pay some of our scarce funds to retired policemen, who would know how to protect the conference from hostile demonstrators. After Houston, I realized that the young women volunteers with red T-shirts and movement experience had kept security far better than the retired cops. My lack of belief in them had been a lack of belief in myself. Before Houston, I had known that women in small groups could be courageous and loyal to each other and respect each other’s differences. After Houston, I’d learned that women could do this in large numbers, across chasms of difference, and for serious purpose. Before Houston, I had said that women could run huge public events at least as well as men. After Houston, I believed it. At the end of an emotional closing ceremony that left all the delegates plus observers singing and chanting, clusters of women lingered for hours on the convention floor—talking, exchanging addresses, pledging to stay in touch. They seemed reluctant to leave this space that had been our only reality for three days and nights. Then at last I found myself standing alone amid the litter and empty chairs, feeling my adrenaline draining away and exhaustion rushing in. I wondered: Would anybody in the future know or care what had happened here? From my own college history courses, I knew that a century of abolitionists and suffragists had been reduced to a few textbook paragraphs. Magnetic people could be made to seem distant, boring, irrelevant. In newspaper coverage, the Houston conference was far overshadowed by a brief and symbolic visit to Israel by President Sadat of Egypt.15 As if summoned by my doubt, three young Native women were walking toward me across the Coliseum floor. One was carrying a red-fringed shawl with a ribbon-work border of purple and gold. Another held a long beaded necklace with a large blue and white medallion. They put the shawl around my shoulders, explaining that I could wear it while dancing at powwows.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already, and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy. All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in the country. She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the country. In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as though he were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to her. At home in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his right place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never unoccupied. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in society, as one sometimes looks at those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so as to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a panic even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable figure, that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and striking, as she thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from without, but from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was the only way she could define his condition to herself. Sometimes she inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life here so that he could be satisfied with it.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  and said: “Son, the temporal fire and the eternal, hast thou seen, and art come to a place where I, of myself, discern no further. Here have I brought thee with wit and with art; now take thy pleasure for guide; forth art thou from the steep ways, forth art from the narrow. Behold there the sun that shineth on thy brow; behold the tender grass, the flowers, and the shrubs, which the ground here of itself alone brings forth. While the glad fair eyes are coming, which weeping made me come to thee, thou canst sit thee down and canst go among them. No more expect my word, nor my sign. Free, upright, and whole, is thy will, and ’twere a fault not to act according to its prompting; wherefore I do crown and mitre thee over thyself.”12 It was sunrise at Jerusalem, midnight in Spain (where Libra, the sign opposite to Aries, would be on the meridian) and noon in India: it was, therefore, sunset at the base of the Mount of Purgatory. But there was still an interval before sunset at the height the poets had reached (cf. Canto xvii).—See diagram on p. 241. 2. As this angel corresponds to the angels that welcome and direct Dante at the end of his journey through each of the other circles, we must suppose that he struck the last P from Dante’s brow with his wing. It is vain, therefore, to seek for any personal confession in Dante’s statement that he had to pass through the flame. The same is true of Statius, for whose final liberation the souls of Purgatory had already sung their hymn of glory to God. The fact seems to be that this flame, in addition to being the instrument of purification on the seventh circle, does duty for the wall of fire, which, according to some representations, surrounds the Garden of Eden.3. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. v. 8).4. See Inf. xvii.5. While Thisbe was waiting for her lover, Pyramus, near a mulberry-tree, a lioness came up from which she fled, dropping a garment in her haste. This the beast stained with blood, having just devoured an ox. When Pyramus came up and saw it on the ground, he thought that Thisbe was dead and stabbed himself. Thisbe returned just in time to see her lover die and then slew herself too; whereupon the colour of the mulberries changed from white to red. Dante knew the story from Ovid, Met. iv. See Canto xxxiii, and cf. De Mon. ii. 9.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Tell if the light wherewith your being blossometh, eternally will cleave to you as now, and if it doth remain, tell how, when ye grow visible again, it may not grieve your vision.” As by access of gladness thrust and drawn, at once all they who circle in the dance uplift their voice and gladden their gestures, so at the eager and devoted prayer the sacred circles showed new joy in their revolving and their wondrous note. Whoso lamenteth that we here must die to live up yonder seeth not here the refreshment of the eternal shower. That One and Two and Three who ever liveth and reigneth ever in Three and Two and One, not circumscribed, but all circumscribing, three times was hymned by each one of those spirits with such melody as were a fit reward to any merit. And I heard in the divinest light of the smaller circle an unassuming voice, 1 perchance such as the Angel’s unto Mary, answering: “As long as the festival of Paradise shall be, so long our love shall cast round us the rays of such a garment. Its brightness shall keep pace with our ardour, our ardour with our vision, and that shall be as great as it hath grace beyond its proper worth. Whenas the garment of the glorified and sainted flesh shall be resumed, our person shall be more acceptable by being all complete. 2 Whereby shall grow that which the highest Good giveth to us of unearned light, light which enableth us him to see; wherefore the vision must needs wax, and wax the ardour which is kindled by it, and wax the ray which goeth forth from it. 3 But like the coal which giveth forth the flame, and by its living glow o’ercometh it, so that its own appearance is maintained, so shall this glow which doth already swathe us, be conquered in appearance by the flesh which yet and yet the earth o’ercovereth; nor shall such light have power to baffle us, for the organs of the body shall be strong to all that may delight us.” So swift and eager to cry Amen, meseemed, was the one and the other chorus, that verily they showed desire for their dead bodies; not only, as I take it, for themselves, but for their mothers and their fathers and the others who were dear, ere they became eternal flames. 4 And lo! around, of lustre equable, upsprings a shining beyond what was there, in fashion of a brightening horizon. And as, at the first rise of evening, new things-to-see begin to show in heaven, so that the sight doth, yet doth not, seem real; I there began to perceive new-come existences making a circle out beyond the other two circumferences. Oh very sparkling of the Holy Breath! how sudden and how glowing it became before my eyes, which, vanquished, might not bear it!

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  give heed to his unmeasured yearning and bedew him somewhat: ye drink ever of the fountain whence floweth that on which his thought is fixed.” Thus Beatrice: and those glad souls made themselves spheres upon fixed poles, outflaming mightily like unto comets. And even as wheels in harmony of clock-work so turn that the first, to whoso noteth it, seemeth still, and the last to fly, so did these carols2 with their differing whirl, or swift or slow, make me deem of their riches. From the one I noted of most beauty, I saw issue a so blissful flame it left none there of greater brightness; and thrice round Beatrice did it sweep with so divine a song, my fantasy repeateth it not to me; wherefore my pen leapeth, and I write it not; for such folds our imagination, not only our speech, is too vivid colouring.3 “O holy sister mine, who thus dost pray to us devoutly, by thy glowing love, thou dost unloosen me from this fair sphere.” The breath that thus discoursed, as I have written down, was turned unto my Lady by that blessed flame so soon as it had stayed. And she: “O light eternal of that great man to whom our Lord gave up the keys he brought down of this wondrous joy, test this man here on the points both light and grave, as it doth please thee, anent the faith whereby thou once didst walk upon the sea. Whether he loveth well and well hopeth and believeth is not hidden from thee, for thou hast thy vision there where everything is seen depicted. But since this realm hath made its citizens by the true faith, ’tis well that, for the glorifying of it, it should chance him to speak thereof.” Even as the bachelor armeth himself and speaketh not until the master setteth forth the question, to sanction it, but not determine it:4 so did I arm myself with every reason whilst she was speaking, that I might be ready for such examiner and such profession. “Good Christian, speak, and manifest thyself; what thing is faith?” Whereat I lifted up my brow upon that light whence breathed forth this word; then turned me to Beatrice, and she made eager indication to me that I should pour the water forth from my inward fountain. “May the grace that granteth me to confess me,” I began, “to the veteran fore-fighter, make my thought find expression!” And I followed on: “As wrote for us, O father, the veracious pen of thy dear brother,5 who, with thee, set Rome on the good track; faith is the substance of things hoped for, and argument of things which are not seen; and this I take to be its quiddity.”6 Then heard I: “Rightly dost thou deem, if well thou understandest wherefore he placed it amongst the substances, and then amongst the arguments.”7

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  As it was, I just longed to go home, put my head under a pillow, and forget this event that I cared about too much—and feared would fail. In the midst of this chaos, about twenty women delegates from Indian Country were taking matters into their own hands. They had found each other by putting a hand-lettered notice in the lobby. When no meeting room was available, they gathered for their own talking circle in a fancy anteroom of the ladies’ lounge. Rarely had these women from different and distant parts of Indian Country been able to meet together. When they told me this, I had my first flash of organizer’s pride: If only this happens, it will be enough. In the cavernous Coliseum, young women officials in red T-shirts began admitting delegates to the floor. Groups slowly filled up its acres of chairs arranged by states, as in a presidential convention. Outside, picketers were still chanting angry slogans, but they were soon drowned out by the buzz from the floor and from bleachers filling up with observers. Up the center aisle, two young women runners brought the lighted torch from Seneca Falls, miraculously just in time for Maya Angelou to read the poem she had composed for the occasion. I watched from behind the big stage as two past First Ladies and the wife of the current president—Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Rosalynn Carter—greeted the delegates. The three women were applauded by activists who probably had demonstrated against all their husbands. Groups of observers holding signs from Mexico, India, and Japan cheered for a speech by Barbara Jordan, the African American congresswoman from Texas, as, in her elegant rhetoric, she called for “a domestic human rights program.” Later teenagers led a standing ovation for an antinuclear speech by anthropologist Margaret Mead, though I knew many had no idea who this feisty old lady was. With twenty-six multi-issue planks that had emerged from the states on subjects from child care to foreign policy, there was both fervent debate and an undercurrent of worry about the time it would take to debate them all. As the hours went on, the chairs and parliamentarians rotated, each one looking like Toscanini conducting a huge and unruly orchestra. I listened to disputes over arcane points of order, and also to heartfelt speeches, demonstrations that interrupted everything, and much caucusing on the floor. I couldn’t believe that, somehow, process and a sense of humor were prevailing. Despite fervent protests from all the women wearing anti-ERA buttons and American flags, the controversial “sexual preference” or sexual orientation plank passed. The conference had supported the right of lesbians to equal treatment in employment and child custody. Most surprising, Betty Friedan spoke from the floor in its support, marking the end of her decade-long stand that including lesbians—the “Lavender Menace,” in her famous phrase, which was then adopted with humor and defiance by lesbians themselves—would damage or doom the women’s movement.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  There's that fucking elephant again, followed by a small faction of “the society of enlightened enthusiasts” of said elephant-loving gentleman. Fuck that—and ignore the fact of the gay leader on the goddamned convertible. Who cares when there's the beautiful, dazzling, simply fabulous, gorgeous, lavish, lovely, glamorous, scintillating, glittering, stunning Queen of the Long Beach Drag Ball and her princesses and she's seen you on the sidewalk and smiles and tells the princesses and blows a kiss at you at the very same moment that the bare-chested bodybuilder next to you is inching toward you while you inch, too, to touch thighs? Faces grim, cops assigned to escort the parade grind their motorcycles in angry commentary. They roar the dark machines threateningly close to the often-bare tapping feet of the spectators on the curbs. The only allies of the cops here today are the bellowing jesuspeople, pitiful scraggy zombies who leapt easily from acid bummers into Bible hallucinations. They shout the curses inked on their placards: “Homosexuals are Damned.” “Satan is the Homosexual god.” Everyone ignores them, as they ignore the cops. And then a moment's epiphany: Defendants enmeshed in the iron spiderweb of courts and idiotic laws—busted during a notorious gay bathhouse raid—march along the street: a woman chained to a man, each flanked and handcuffed to a gay man in cop uniform—a chilling spectacle, a reminder to how many spectators of their own arrests? Then the group pauses, and the two gay men playing cops turn to each other and embrace lovingly, and kiss. The roar of the real-cops' motorcycles boomed like shots, the drivers—faces drained—had understood but resisted the message that would have cost them thousands of dollars on a psychiatrist's couch. Then a touching group: A scattering of parents of gays. A part of the parade, gay motorcyclists, real bikers, cut snappy figures on the street with their machines. The butchest, dieselest, lady-dude God ever made—tattoo on bulging biceps—matches them turn for turn. Half a block more, and the parade will end. I felt a letdown. We had showed a part our numbers—and our colors—and everyone had felt, could not have helped but feel, the crackling energy, the electric charging pride. But now it will end. Along the block where the parade has already passed, others feeling the same urge to extend these bold moments rush impulsively into the street to join the parade. Uncoiling the tight tension, four cops attack one man. One cop jumps him—mounts him—two other cops wrench his arms, another aims a bully club at his legs, three others rush in to join the rampage. (Later the man will be busted and charged with interference and resisting arrest, but a series of photographs recording the cop actions will clear him and pave the way for his suit charging violation of his rights.) Other spectators attempt to join the parade. Instantly the cops are on them. Joyous laughter roars into anger along the sidewalks.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  1. For the meeting of Anchises and Æneas, see Æneid, vi. For family tree, see p. 625.2. God.3. God who is the supreme “equality,” i.e., in whom all things realize their absolute proportion and perfection (cf. Canto xxxiii), fills the blessed spirits with love and insight in equal measure, so that their utterance is the perfect expression of their emotion, but we mortals find our wills out-flying our power of utterance.4. Dante has fallen into a slight error. There is documentary evidence that this Alighieri was living in 1201.5. An allusion to the Badia, from the belfry of which the canonical hours were sounded. Tierce was at nine o’clock, nones at twelve. Conv. iii. 6.6. The bride’s age too little, her dowry too much.7. The families being decayed, or in exile.8. Sardanapalus, king of Nineveh, is taken as the general type of luxury.9. Montemalo, or Montemario, was the first point at which the traveller on the road from Viterbo came in sight of Rome, and the Uccellatojo is the first place at which the traveller along the old road from Bologna comes in sight of Florence.10. Bellincion Berti was the father of the “good Gualdrada” (Inf. xvi). See Villani, v. 37. 11. None was in fear lest she should die in exile. The reference to France is obscure; perhaps it alludes to the frequency of travel in France, in Dante’s time, for business or other purposes.12. Compare the early chapters of Villani.13. Cianghella della Tosa, a notorious shrew, married an Imolese Benvenuto da Imola, declares he could tell us many tales of her. Lapo Salterello, took an active part in the patriotic task of resisting the encroachments of Boniface (see Gardner, i. 4, “the Jubilee,” etc.), but appears to have been a worthless person. He was one of Dante’s fellow exiles. Cf. Canto xvii.14. The Virgin Mary was invoked by women in labour, as the virgin goddess Diana had been in Pagan times. Cf. Purg. xx.15. The name Eliseo may be taken as an indication, but not as a proof of the connection of the Alighieri with the noble family of the Elisei, asserted by Boccaccio. Compare Canto xvi and Gardner. i. 2.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  2 These are the questions which weigh equally upon thy will; and therefore I will first treat that which hath the most of gall. 3 He of the Seraphim who most doth sink himself in God, Moses, Samuel, and that John whichso thou choose to take, not Mary’s self, in any other heaven hold their seats than these spirits who but now appeared to thee, nor have they to their being more nor fewer years. But all make beauteous the first circle, and share sweet life, with difference, by feeling more and less the eternal breath. They have here revealed themselves, not that this sphere is given them, but to make sign of the celestial one that hath the least ascent. Needs must such speech address your faculty, which only from the sense-reported thing doth apprehend, what it then proceedeth to make fit matter for the intellect. 4 And therefore doth the Scripture condescend to your capacity, assigning foot and hand to God, with other meaning: 5 and Holy Church doth represent to you with human aspect Gabriel and Michael, and him too who made Tobit sound again. 6 That which Timæus argueth of the souls is not the like of what may here be seen, for seemingly he thinketh as he saith. 7 He saith the soul returneth to its star, believing it cleft thence when nature gave it as a form. 8 Although perchance his meaning is of other guise than the word soundeth, and may have a not-to-be-derided purport. If he meaneth that the honour and the blame of their influence return unto these wheels, perchance his bow smiteth a certain truth. This principle misunderstood erst wrenched aside the whole world almost, so that it rushed astray to call upon the names of Jove and Mercury and Mars. 9 The other perplexity which troubleth thee hath less poison, because its malice could not lead thee away from me elsewhere. For our justice to appear unjust in mortal eyes is argument of faith, and not of heretic iniquity. 10 But since your wit hath power to pierce unto this truth, e’en as thou wishest I will satisfy thee. If violence is when he who suffereth doth naught contribute to what forceth him, then these souls had not the excuse of it: for if the will willeth not, it cannot be crushed, but doth as nature doeth in the flame, though violence wrench it aside a thousand times. 11 For should it bend itself, or much or little, it doth abet the force; and so did these, since they had power to return to the sacred place. If their will had remained intact, like that which held Lawrence upon the grid, and made Mucius stern against his own right hand, 12 it would have thrust them back upon the path whence they were drawn, so soon as they were loose; but such sound will is all too rare.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  13 At. ego tunc temporis talibus fatorum fluctibus volutabar: miles ille, qui me nullo vendente com- paraverat et sine pretio suum fecerat, tribuni sui praecepto debitum sustinens obsequium, litteras. ad magnum scriptas principem Romam versus perlaturus, vicinis me quibusdam duobus servis fratribus undecim denariis vendidit. His erat dives admodum dominus: atillorum alter pistor dulciarius, qui panes et mellita concinnabat edulia, alter cocus, qui sapidissimis intri- 494 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X sepulchre where the: child was laid: there was none of the justices, none of any reputation of the town, nor any indeed of the common people, but. went to see this strange sight. Amongst them all the father of the child removed with his own hands the cover of the coffin, and found his son rising up after his dead and soporiferous sleep: and when he beheld him as one risen from the dead he embraced him in his arms; and he could speak never a word ' for his present gladness, but presented him before the people with great joy and consolation, and as he was wrapped: and bound:in the clothes of his grave, so he brought him before the judges. Hereupon the wickedness of the servant and the treason of the stepdame were plainly discovered, and the verity of the matter nakedly revealed: whereby the woman was per- petually exiled, the servant hanged on a gallows, and by the consent of all the physician had the crowns to be a reward for the timely sleep which he had prepared for the child. Behold how the great and’ wonderful’ fortune of the old: man brought by the providence of God to.an happy end; who, think- ing to-be deprived of'all his: race and» posterity, was quickly, nay in the twinkling of an eye, made the father of two children. But as for me I was ruled. and handled by fortune, according to her pleasure: for the soldier which. got me without a seller and. paid never a penny for me, by the commandment of his captain was sent unto Rome in course of his duty to carry letters to the great Prince, and before he went he sold me for eleven pence to two of his companions, brothers, being servants to a man of worship and’ wealth, whereof one was a baker, that baked: sweet bread and delicates ; the other a cook, which dressed with rich É 495 14 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Then when he had thus spoken I was obedient unto these words, and fretted not my duty with lack of patience; but I was attentive with meek quiet- ness and taciturnity to prove me. I daily served at the temple: and in the end the wholesome gentle- ness of the goddess did nothing deceive me, for she tormented me with no long delay, but in a dark night she appeared to me in a vision, declaring in words not dark that the day was come which I had wished for so long; she told me what provision and charges I should be at for the supplications, and how that she had appointed her principal priest Mithras, that was joined unto my destiny (as she said) by the ordering of the planets, to be a minister with me in my sacrifices. When I had heard these and theother divine commandments of the high goddess, I greatly rejoiced, and arose before day to speak with the great priest, whom I fortuned to espy coming out ot his chamber. Then I saluted him, and thought with myself to ask and demand with a bold courage that I should be initiate, as a thing now due; but as soon as he perceived me, he began first to say: “ O Lucius, now know I well that thou art most happy and blessed, whom the divine goddess doth so greatly accept with mercy. Why dost thou stand idle and delay? Behold the day which thou didst desire with prayer, when as thou shalt receive at my hands the order of most secret and holy religion, according to the divine commandment of this goddess of many names." Thereupon the old man took me by the hand, and led me courteously to the gate of the great temple, where, after that it was religiously opened, he made a solemn celebration, and after the morning 72.0 577 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From Escape (2007)

  Santa explained that he had brought so many presents that he only had room to bring along one elf and Mrs. Claus to help him. And the reindeer had had to stay back at the barn because he needed to come to our house in two cars instead of just his sleigh. Mrs. Claus began bringing in bags of presents from the car. Santa told my children they could help put the gifts under the tree. Merrilee’s eyes looked like they were about to cartwheel out of her head with excitement. Patrick and Andrew were fascinated and incredulous. Even Betty began to get interested in the presents when she saw how many were arriving. She started to help Santa make extra space for them. When Patrick thought no one was looking, he grabbed a big plate of sugar cookies that Santa had brought and wolfed them down. I noticed that Patrick kept his eyes on Betty, wary that she might catch him eating. Merril had instructed the children to fast until the next day. But Betty stayed engaged with Santa, and Patrick finished the cookies. As soon as Santa left, my children began clamoring to open their presents. I told them Santa had come early to our house because he had so many packages for us, but that we were going to wait for three more days until Christmas before opening them. My strategy was simple: I wanted to extend their excitement and anticipation as long as I could to help counter the trauma of their visitations. Betty was outraged about our Christmas tree. We never would have had such a thing in Colorado City. Every time she came into the room, she turned off the lights on it. “Christmas is a lie. You just planned this to make us want to be with you and not our father.” Then she told her brothers and sisters that I was trying to buy their loyalty and that they should go ahead and open their presents. I was very firm. Any present that was opened was going back to Santa. I didn’t argue with Betty, I just laid down the rules. I knew that unless I stood up to her, she would continue to sabotage me the way Merril had. It got easier with time, and Christmas was a help because the other children were so eager and excited about their presents. That undercut Betty’s power. That night I put eight very happy and excited children to bed. Although she never would have admitted it, Betty was as excited about getting Christmas presents as everyone else. There were piles of presents beneath the tree waiting to be opened. Our house felt festive and warm. The three days before Christmas were full of anticipation. My children spent every moment sitting around the tree, looking at presents, shaking them, and imagining what might be inside. “Just one gift, can’t we open just one?” I smiled but remained resolute. No presents until Christmas morning.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  It wasn’t that Marta was dumb. She had been an excellent student. In Indiana, she had topped the state exams in mathematics and science. She had been selected to represent her state in a national mathematics contest, had won a blue ribbon and a full scholarship. Yet in the bar that first night she had felt out of her depth, out and behind everyone else as they talked and raced full steam toward whatever they were arguing about. She’d stood there, her finger tucked through Sigrid’s belt loop, and Sigrid would sometimes look back at her with a smile, as if she were checking on a pet. She hated that look. Its knowing, gentle easiness. She hated it when people treated her like some kind of unwashed beast that needed a long leash and a slow walk. They fought about that look after the bar that night as Marta drove Sigrid home to the Near East Side, over by Willy Street Co-op, where Sigrid worked shifts and bought ugly produce half-off. In Sigrid’s driveway, they parked and listened to the engine click. Marta clenched the wheel because she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. Sigrid was drunk and tired, over it already. “You think I’m dumb,” she said. But Sigrid said, “Don’t put it on me, Marta. If you feel that way, it’s because you feel that way.” And Marta said, “No. It’s not me. It’s not. I do feel that way, but it’s not because of me, or not just because of it. You know that.” Sigrid leaned over the center console and kissed her, and Marta pushed her away, “No, no, we are talking.” But Sigrid just smiled and kissed her—once, twice, three times—and then she felt Sigrid’s hand sliding past the elastic of her pants and pressing flat against the outside of her underwear. Marta felt hot and suffocated, but Sigrid started to massage her there, and she felt loose and buoyed up on a wave of static. She rode that wave, the friction of Sigrid’s hand and the scrunching heat of her panties. Sigrid’s mouth opening, slick and warm, the gentle pressure of Sigrid sucking on her tongue. And then she realized that her hands were still on the wheel, still at ten and two, just as she’d learned how to drive in high school. “Do you want to come in?” Sigrid asked. “Is it okay?” Marta asked back, looking nervously at the prim, white house. The light in the living room was on. “Come in,” she said. It was early April, and there was still snow on the ground, and the lakes were still frozen. In Sigrid’s room, there was a pink quality to the air. Sigrid had draped a diaphanous scarf over the top of her lamp. Marta lay back on Sigrid’s bed with her clothes still on, and Sigrid climbed over her.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  I began: “Ye are my father, ye give me full boldness to speak, ye so uplift me, that I am more than I. By so many streams my mind is filled with gladness, it giveth itself joy that it can bear it and yet not be rent. Tell me, then, dear stock from which I spring, what was your ancestry, and what the years recorded in your boyhood. Tell me of the sheepf old of St. John,4 how great it then was, and who were the folk worthy of loftiest seats in it.” As a coal quickeneth into flame at the wind’s breathing, so did I see that light glow forth at my caressing words; and even as to my sight it grew more beauteous, so with a voice more sweet and gentle, but not in this our modern dialect,6 he said: “From the day on which Ave was uttered, to the birth wherein my mother, now sainted, unburdened her of me with whom she was laden, five hundred, fifty, and thirty times6 did this flame return to his own Lion7 to rekindle him beneath his feet. My forebears and myself were born in the spot where he who runneth in your annual games doth first encounter the last sesto.8 About my ancestors let it suffice so much to hear; of who they were and whence they hither came silence were comelier than discourse.9 At that time all who were there, between Mars and the Baptist,10 capable of arms, were but the fifth of the now living ones. But the citizenship, contaminated now from Campi, from Certaldo and from Fighine, saw itself pure down to the humblest artisan. Oh, how much better were it for these folk of whom I speak to be your neighbours,11 and to have your boundary at Galluzzo and at Trespiano, than to have them within, and bear the stench of the hind of Aguglion, and of him of Signa,12 who still for jobbery hath his eye alert! Had the race, which goeth most degenerate on earth, not been to Caesar as a stepmother, but, as a mother to her son, benign, one who is now a Florentine and changeth coin and wares, had been dispatched to Simifonte, where his own grandfather went round a-begging.13 Still would Montemurlo14 pertain unto the Conti, still were the Cerchi in Acone15 parish, and perchance in Valdigreve were still the Buondelmonti.16 Ever was mingling of persons the source of the city’s woes, as piled on food is of the body’s. And a blind bull falleth more presently than a blind lamb, and many a time cutteth one sword better and more than five. If thou regard Luni and Urbisaglia,17 how they have perished, and how are following them Chiusi and Sinigaglia;18 it shall not seem a novel or hard thing to hear how families undo themselves, since even cities have their term.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O X X X I I IThe final goal of divine Providence, the mysteries of the incarnation and the redemption, the contrast between earthly hope and heavenly fruition, the whole order of the spiritual universe epitomized in the Poet’s journey, the crowning grace still awaiting him, the need of jet father purging away of mortal dross if he is to receive it, the high obligation that will rest upon his life hereafter, the sustaining grace that will be needed to enable him to meet it by keeping his affections true to so great a vision, and the intense sympathy with which all the saints enter into his aspiration and plead for the fulfilment of the utmost grace to him as a part of their own bliss,—all this, with the praises of the Virgin, etherialized into the very perfume of devotion, rises in Bernard’s prayer to Mary. Mary answers the prayer by looking into the light of God, thereby to gain Bernard’s petition for Dante; and Dante, anticipating Bernard’s permission, with the passion of his longing already assuaged by the peace of now assured fruition, looks right into the deep light. Memory cannot hold the experience that then was his, though it retains the sweetness that was born of it. But as he gropes for the recovery of some fragment of his vision, he feels in the throb cf an ampler joy the assurance that he is touching on the truth as he records his belief that he saw the whole essence of the universe, all beings and all their attributes and all their relations, no longer as scattered and imperfect fragments, but as one perfect whole, and that whole naught else than one single flame of love. So keen is the light of that flame that it would shrivel up the sight if it should turn aside. But that may not be, since good, which is the object of all volition, is whole and perfect in it, and only fragmentary and imperfect away from it, so that a free will cannot by its nature turn away; and the sight is ever strengthened that turns right into it. As when we look upon a picture or a script, glorious but at first imperfectly mastered by us, and as our eyes slowly adjust themselves, the details rise and assert themselves and take their places, and all the while that the impression changes and deepens the thing that we look upon changes not nor even seems to change, but only we to see it clearer, so Dante’s kindling vision reads deeper and deeper into the unchanging glory of the triune Deity, till his mind fastens itself upon the contemplation of the union (in the second Person) of the circle of Deity and the featured countenance of humanity—the unconditioned self-completeness of God that reverent thought asserts and the character and features which the heart demands and which its experience proclaims,—but his powers fail to grapple with the contradiction till the reconciliation is brought home to him in a flash of exalted insight. Then the vision passes away and may not be recalled, but already all jarring protest and opposition to the divine order has given way in the seer’s heart to oneness of wish and will with God, who himself is love.

• From Escape (2007)

  But Arthur got into trouble with his father because he watched Scooby-Doo on TV when he stayed with us. I was always tense when Merril came to see us because I feared one of my kids would talk about watching cartoons on TV. I warned them not to but was always nervous until Merril and Barbara left. Merril and Barbara were coming more frequently. I had them over a barrel. The motel was running well. Jeremy and I had worked really hard and made it a financial success. Barbara absolutely hated our success—no one was supposed to be happy outside their orbit, and I had made a life independent of them. My newfound freedom energized and stabilized me. I felt happy in a way I had never been since I married Merril. I was alone with my children, or four of them at least, and we were making it. I was exhausted, but I was not under Merril and Barbara’s domination and control. Both of them did things to make my job even harder. Barbara stopped paying the motel’s phone bills. Then she stopped paying utilities and the gas got turned off. Jeremy and I scrounged up the money to pay the bills. This angered Merril. Why hadn’t we asked Barbara to deal with this? I was not going to tell Merril the real reason. Jeremy and I kept coming up with end runs around whatever obstacle they would put in our path. We were running a business and running it well. Merril tried to turn Jeremy against me. But that backfired. Jeremy saw through his tactics and refused to be intimidated by him. Both of us knew the enemy was Merril Jessop. Turning Point Jeremy and I were an outrageous success in running the motel. We started there in April 1998, and by the end of that summer there was a net profit of $60,000 that enabled Merril to pay off past-due bills. The motel was shining, the tourists were happy, and it was clear that the momentum we’d generated for the business was going strong. It was a joy for me to wake up happy every day. I knew my children were safe and I was in control of my day-to-day destiny. Now that Jeremy and I had the motel up and running, we were going to focus on our Web site business. That would be impossible for Merril or Barbara to sabotage. It would truly be our own. As summer ended, Jeremy left for a two-week break and my sisters came to stay with me. We were going to clean the motel from top to bottom in preparation for the slower fall and winter season. I was cleaning the north buildings when a man walked over to me. I didn’t like the looks of Jason the moment I saw him. There was something creepy about him. He told me he needed a place to stay on a long-term basis. I said we hadn’t anything available.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They had not had sex and had slept in the same bed only twice in the weeks they had been seeing each other. In part this had to do with the fact that Marta lived in Baraboo and was only in Madison a few times a week, and in part it had to do with their roommates. Katie was always home, and Sigrid’s roommate, a tall law student named Thad, liked to have all his friends over, all the time. It may also have had something to do with how Marta cried the first time they went home together. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. The moment Sigrid kissed her, she’d started crying. Not because it was bad, but because it was so good and so right. She’d been waiting her whole life for it and hadn’t even known it, and the moment she felt Sigrid’s lips on hers, she’d felt a jolt, a crack of lightning in her body. She’d cried because she’d expected it to be awful, and it hadn’t been. But she felt embarrassed about the kiss, and she’d asked Sigrid if she could just lie there next to her, if it was all right just to be in bed together, and Sigrid had said, Of course, of course, which had felt like both an act of mercy and an act of contrition. The first time Marta met Sigrid’s friends from graduate school in a downtown bar, she was surprised by how normal they looked. They weren’t in tweed and collared shirts and chinos. They weren’t dressed like miniature professors. They wore jeans and T-shirts and baseball caps with logos from minor teams around the Midwest. They wore boots and sneakers. They spoke in the flat, clipped way she was accustomed to, and at first she fell right in with the rhythm of their conversation: the weather, the price of gas, the merits of cheap beer and free time. Marta, in her stretch-waist pants and scuffed steel-toes, felt at ease among them. She sat next to Sigrid along the bar, her arm loosely around her shoulders, Sigrid’s arm around her waist. Sometimes they’d catch each other’s eye and couldn’t stop from smiling. But at some point in the night the conversation cinched in the middle, as if someone had tightened a belt around it, so that all their focus and energy had been funneled down to a point so small Marta that could barely grasp it. Something about semiotics. Something about the nature of knowledge.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  During the whole of that day, in the extremely different conversations in which he took part, only as it were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the disappointment of not finding the change he expected in himself, Levin had been all the while joyfully conscious of the fulness of his heart. After the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm clouds still hung about the horizon, and gathered here and there, black and thundery, on the rim of the sky. The whole party spent the rest of the day in the house. No more discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after dinner everyone was in the most amiable frame of mind. At first Katavasov amused the ladies by his original jokes, which always pleased people on their first acquaintance with him. Then Sergey Ivanovitch induced him to tell them about the very interesting observations he had made on the habits and characteristics of common houseflies, and their life. Sergey Ivanovitch, too, was in good spirits, and at tea his brother drew him on to explain his views of the future of the Eastern question, and he spoke so simply and so well, that everyone listened eagerly. Kitty was the only one who did not hear it all—she was summoned to give Mitya his bath. A few minutes after Kitty had left the room she sent for Levin to come to the nursery. Leaving his tea, and regretfully interrupting the interesting conversation, and at the same time uneasily wondering why he had been sent for, as this only happened on important occasions, Levin went to the nursery. Although he had been much interested by Sergey Ivanovitch’s views of the new epoch in history that would be created by the emancipation of forty millions of men of Slavonic race acting with Russia, a conception quite new to him, and although he was disturbed by uneasy wonder at being sent for by Kitty, as soon as he came out of the drawing-room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to the thoughts of the morning. And all the theories of the significance of the Slav element in the history of the world seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the same frame of mind that he had been in that morning.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Sigrid spent most of her time in the archives sifting through documents, though she was not a trained archivist. She always added that part after she talked about her day, like saying amen after a prayer. Sigrid was hard to read sometimes. She never said, I’m tired, or My boss is being a real jerkhole today, or Someone swiped my lunch from the fridge, or My eyes hurt. Instead, Sigrid talked about the historicity of women’s diaries from the late early-modern period. She said things like, The only thing that hasn’t changed is how women are surveilled. Women were the first encryption devices. Marta did not know what Sigrid was looking for. Indeed, the whole objective of Sigrid’s work seemed to be a kind of pointless looking, organized and formalized by the creation and dissemination of increasingly complicated blocks of text. When they spoke on the phone at lunch or after dinner, Marta listened to Sigrid’s smooth, warm voice as she explained why it was so important that she had found a re-creation of a re-creation of a re-creation of some middle passage from a diary of some shepherdess in Scotland. “That sounds great,” Marta would say, eating her sandwich on the grassy hill behind the plant. She could see the town, its gray, scraggly mass spread thin. It was cold in those early days, but she wanted to be alone to talk to Sigrid without being overheard. She hadn’t told anyone about dating women. She hadn’t wanted to explain herself to anyone—not to her roommate, Katie, not to the boys at the plant, not to any of the other faceless people who made up her life. Marta felt for the first time in a long time that she had an inner self she didn’t owe to anyone. Before, with Peter, living had always felt like a constant mingling of the outside and the inside, and people had worn her out just as a matter of course in the act of living, but Sigrid, in the quiet, small time they had spent together, allowed her, for a moment or two at least, to pretend she could be her own person in her own way. Even if she did not understand what Sigrid was talking about most of the time. Marta always signed off by sighing and saying, “Well, kiddo, I better mosey.” Sigrid would say, “Oh, I’m such a blabbermouth. I’m sorry. How are you? I wasted all our time.” And Marta would say, as easy as anything, “I’m doing fine. It’s work, you know.” And they’d talk another couple of minutes, Marta looking up at the sky, taking in a bit of the pale light, enjoying being fussed over, being told to eat her vegetables and moisturize and get some good sleep.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “What is that, sweet Father, from which I cannot screen my sight so that it may avail me,” said I, “and seems to be moving towards us?” “Marvel thou not if the heavenly household yet dazes thee,” he answered me, “ ’tis a messenger that cometh to invite us to ascend. Soon will it be that to behold these things shall not be grievous to thee, but shall be a joy to thee, as great as nature hath fitted thee to feel.” When we had reached the blessed angel, with gladsome voice, he said: “Enter here to a stairway far less steep than the others.” We were mounting, already departed thence, and “Beati misericordes” was sung behind, and “Rejoice thou that overcomest.” 3 My Master and I, alone we two, were mounting up, and I thought while journeying to gain profit from his words; and I directed me to him thus asking: “What meant the spirit from Romagna by mentioning ‘exclusion’ and ‘partnership’?” 4 Whereupon he to me: “He knoweth the hurt of his greatest defect, and therefore let none marvel it he reprove it, that it be less mourned for. Forasmuch as your desires are centered where the portion is lessened by partnership, envy moves the bellows to your sighs. But if the love of the highest sphere wrested your desire upwards, that fear would not be at your heart; for by so many more there are who say ‘ours,’ so much the more of good doth each possess, and the more of love burneth in that cloister.” “I am more fasting from being satisfied,” said I, “than if I had kept silent at first, and more perplexity I amass in my mind. How can it be that a good, when shared, shall make the greater number of possessors richer in it, than if it is possessed by a few?” And he to me: “Because thou dost again fix thy mind merely on things of earth, thou drawest darkness from true light. That infinite and ineffable Good, that is on high, speedeth so to love as a ray of light comes to a bright body. As much of ardour as it finds, so much of itself doth it give, so that how far soever love extends, eternal goodness giveth increase upon it; and the more people on high who comprehend each other, the more there are to love well, and the more love is there, and like a mirror one giveth back to the other. And if my discourse stays not thy hunger, thou shalt see Beatrice, and she will free thee wholly from this and every other longing. Strive only that soon, even as the other two are, the five wounds may be rased out, which are healed by our sorrowing.” As I was about to say: “Thou dost satisfy me,” I saw me arrived on the next circuit, so that my eager eyes made me silent.