Loneliness

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 Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  What is so striking is how unsexual that whole section of the city is. There are lots of people “having sex” night and day, but that’s all it is. There’s no connection. That’s, actually, the only way it works. They agree to a certain fee for certain acts performed, she performs them, he pays her, and then they part ways. The only way they would ever see each other again is on the slim probability that he would return and they would repeat this transaction. There’s no connection whatsoever. If she for a moment connected with him in any other way than the strictly physical, it would put her job, and therefore her financial security, in jeopardy. And so in the Red Light District there’s lots of physical interaction and no connection. There are lots of people having lots of physical sex—for some it’s their job—and yet it’s not a very sexual place at all. There’s even a phrase that people use with a straight face—“casual sex.” The rationale is often, “It’s just sex.” Exactly. When it’s just sex, then that’s all it is. It leaves the person deeply unconnected. You can be having sex with many, and yet you’re alone. And the more sex you have, the more alone you are. And it’s possible to be sleeping alone, and celibate, and to be very sexual. Connected with many. It’s also possible to be married to somebody and sharing the same bed and be very disconnected. It’s possible to be married to somebody and sharing the same bed and even having sex regularly and still be profoundly disconnected. There’s a saying in the recovery movement: “You are only as sick as your secrets.” This is true for relationships as well. If there are secrets that haven’t been shared, topics that can’t be discussed, things from the past that are forbidden to be brought up, it can cripple a marriage. And so they’re sleeping together, but they’re really sleeping alone. The Communal Dimension This has huge implications for what it means to be a part of a community. How many people do you know who aren’t a part of a church, company, or community because of the way they were treated? When we hurt each other, when we gossip about each other, when we fail to forgive each other, when we don’t do the work of making peace with each other, we get severed from each other, cut off, divided. I often meet people who aren’t part of a church and don’t want anything to do with God because of “all those religious hypocrites.” Often they have great pain that they blame on “the church.” But it’s not possible for an institution, whether it’s a church or a school or a business or even the government, to hurt somebody.11 Institutions are made up of people. People hurt people.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  They are in search of new and novel sensations and have a nose for trends. They are not only comfortable with noise and bustle but actively search it out. If they are bold, they love physical adventure. If they are not so bold, they love creature comforts. In any event, they crave stimulation and attention from others. Introverts are more sensitive and easily exhausted by too much outward activity. They like to conserve their energy, to spend time alone or with one or two close friends. As opposed to extroverts, who are fascinated by facts and statistics for their own sake, introverts are interested in their own opinions and feelings. They love to theorize and come up with their own ideas. If they produce something, they do not like to promote it; they find the effort distasteful. What they make should sell itself. They like to keep a part of their life separate from others, to have secrets. Their opinions do not come from what others think or from any authority but from their inner criteria, or at least they think so. The bigger the crowd, the more lost and lonely they feel. They can seem awkward and mistrustful, uncomfortable with attention. They also tend to be more pessimistic and worried than the average extrovert. Their boldness will be expressed by the novel ideas they come up with and their creativity. You might notice tendencies in both directions in individuals or yourself, but in general people trend in one or the other direction. It is important to gauge this in others for a simple reason: introverts and extroverts do not naturally understand each other. To the extrovert, the introvert has no fun, is stubborn, even antisocial. To the introvert, the extrovert is shallow, flighty, and overly concerned with what people think. Being one or the other is generally something genetic and will make two people see the same thing in a totally different light. Once you understand you are dealing with someone of the other variety than yourself, you must reassess their character and not foist your own preferences on them. Also, sometimes introverts and extroverts can work well together, particularly if people have a mix of both qualities and they complement each other, but more often than not they do not get along and are prone to constant misunderstandings. Keep in mind that there are generally more extroverts than introverts in the world. Finally, it is critical that you measure the relative strength of people’s character. Think of it in this way: such strength comes from deep within the core of the person. It could stem from a mixture of certain factors—genetics, secure parenting, good mentors along the way, and constant improvement (see the final section of this chapter).

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  At thirteen Joni applied to boarding school on her own initiative, was accepted, and left home for good. At the time she thought of herself as an ambitious girl. In retrospect, she realizes that this was an attempt to escape the problematic distribution of needs and resources that ruled the family’s emotional economy. Over the years she has developed a network of solid friendships that have nurtured her in many ways. But in the end, neither boarding school, nor her career, nor alcohol, nor even her friends have protected her from the inescapable dependency or from the quagmire of vulnerabilities that intimate love entails. Act II: Enter Ray. In his own words, Ray is a meat-and-potatoes man. He’s the happy product of successful male socialization: independent, self-reliant, and able to handle his own problems. He was not like the guys Joni usually dated—struggling, self-absorbed, emotionally undependable, alcoholic artists who weaseled out of relationships by saying things like, “Let’s not try to define this; can’t we just see where it goes?” and “It’s because I like you that I can’t be with you.” Ray, on the other hand, made it clear that he was interested. He called when he said he would, was never late, and put a lot of thought into planning their dates. “He actually paid attention to what I said. He asked me questions about myself and remembered the answers. I was used to a scene where you can have sex with someone for six months and never even broach the subject of what that might mean or where it might be going. Ray didn’t play that game. He liked me and wasn’t afraid to say so.” Ray’s openness, his consistency, and his emotional generosity brought Joni a sense of peace and security she had never known in a romantic relationship. She found his ability to intuit her needs positively enchanting, and the fact that he seemed to have so few needs of his own was also a plus. “What an irresistible lure, having a man who can anticipate your needs,” I said. “Tell me, how long did it last?” “Not long enough. I feel like I’m constantly having to ask Ray for everything these days; sometimes I have to ask him twice. I can’t stand it,” she answers. “Ah, cowboys to the rescue. You don’t even have to ask them once.”

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as the Queen and the Squid Here is a story I learned from a squid: There was a queen, and she was lonely again. So she summoned all of her counselors, who then summoned all of the personages in the land so she could find a companion of her very own. The counselors spent much time in deliberation, and after three days behind closed doors they brought her a squid, with no small amount of pomp and pageantry. She was utterly delighted. The squid was everything she had ever wanted: pearlescent and damp, sinewy and intelligent. The squid, in turn, was delighted with her own new situation. She had, from afar, admired the queen, and could hardly believe the queen had chosen her as her own. At first, their friendship was a magnificent one. They traveled to the edges of the kingdom, and the squid would bring the queen beautiful baubles from tiny sea caves at the coast. The queen took the squid to visit distant dignitaries, and at night they trawled the shadowed halls in search of midnight snacks. It was a companionship defined by its tenderness, and the two were unspeakably happy. But after a while, the queen grew bored with her companion. Those were difficult times. Sometimes the queen left the squid locked outside her study, and the squid would sit upon the dry, cool stones praying she would be returned to her bowl before her skin turned to paper. And even when the queen and the squid kept each other company, the queen was distant, often cruel. She would flip the squid over and drop little pieces of trash into her gnashing beak. And the queen would scrub whatever surface the squid touched, scolding her for her thoughtless messes. (The squid, as you know, has three hearts, and all of them broke over and over in her time with the queen.) One night, when the queen was sleeping, the squid decided to gambol about the palace. She found her way to a mop bucket and wheeled herself around the corridors, enjoying the silence. After she had traveled some distance she found herself at the end of a hallway, before a very strange and heavy door. The squid was about to turn around and leave when she heard something. She opened the door and slid into the dim room. The smell was terrible. Not the organic stench of death but the wine-dark depths of sorrow—thick and bitter. And the sounds—the squid had never heard anything like that before. The low moan of water draining from a bath; keen wails darting through the room like bright birds. The squid’s large eyes began to adjust to the light. When she realized what she was seeing, she wheeled her bucket as quickly as possible back down the hallway and back to the queen’s room. Some time later, the squid looked out the window and saw that the queen was cavorting with a bear.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  The pecking-hen salt and pepper shakers, the donkey with a dead plant coming out of his back, the stacks of old magazines under tables and on the seats of chairs. Underneath me are three scatter rugs, converging their corners in a lump under my back. Rag rugs, one of them made from bread wrappers. Hoss Cartwright saves the schoolteacher when her horse shies and now she’s in love with him. Little Joe tries to punch Hoss out. Behind me my grandmother’s knitting needles click together in a sad and empty way, Ralph’s breathing is audible over the scratch of scissor blades on stone. In the dim circle of light that I lay in, my head cushioned on an Arkansas Razorback pillow, I feel completely separate from them because of the simple fact that in seven days I will be rescued, removed from this terrible lonely place and put back in the noisy house I came from. It occurs to me that Grandma and Ralph have nothing, they don’t even enjoy Bonanza all that much, they just turned it on because my mom told them to let me watch it. There can’t be anything for them to enjoy, with their long empty days, full of curled-up old ladies and dirty sheep. They don’t even drink pop. I am crying on the floor, the tears go sideways and land coldly in my ears or on the velveteen pillow. I can’t bear, suddenly, the way the television sends out its sad blue light, making the edges of the room seem darker. A coffee can covered with contact paper holds red, white, and blue Fourth of July flowers, taken from a dead person. I wish suddenly that my grandma was dead, so she wouldn’t have to knit that afghan anymore. The rest of the year, while I’m gone back home and am playing with my friends, this is where my grandma is, her needles going, her teeth in the bathroom in a plastic bowl. My ears are swimming pools, and I feel trapped suddenly inside the small circle of light in the center of the room. I’m tiny Eva, watching Little Joe Cartwright through the bars of my crib, I’m a monkey, strapped into a space capsule and flung far out into the galaxy, weightless, hurtling along upside down through the Milky Way. Alone, alone, and alone. Against my will, I sob out loud. I turn over and weep into the Arkansas pillow, wrecking the velveteen. Suddenly my grandma’s hand is on my hair, the knitting needles have been set down. There is telephone talk, and muffled comments from Grandma to Ralph, from Ralph to the person on the other end of the phone. My nose is pressed against the pillow and I’m still crying, or trying to. I suddenly want to hear what’s going on but I don’t have the nerve to sit up.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  the very top of the scale and beyond—complete absorption in others. By our very nature, we humans have tremendous abilities to understand people from the inside out. In our earliest years, we felt completely bonded with our mother, and we could sense her every mood and read her every emotion in a preverbal way. Unlike any other animal or primate, we also had the ability to extend this beyond the mother to other caregivers and people in our vicinity. This is the physical form of empathy that we feel even to this day with our closest friends, spouses, or partners. We also have a natural ability to take the perspective of others, to think our way inside their minds. These powers largely lie dormant because of our self-absorption. But in our twenties and beyond, feeling more confident about ourselves, we can begin to focus outward, on people, and rediscover these powers. Those who practice this empathy often become superior social observers in the arts or sciences, therapists, and leaders of the highest order. The need to develop this empathy is greater than ever. Various studies have indicated a gradual increase in levels of self-absorption and narcissism in young people since the late 1970s, with a much higher spike since 2000. Much of this can be attributed to technology and the internet. People simply spend less time in social interactions and more time socializing online, which makes it increasingly difficult to develop empathy and sharpen social skills. Like any skill, empathy comes through the quality of attention. If your attention is continually interrupted by the need to look at your smartphone, you are never really gaining a foothold in the feelings or perspectives of other people. You are continually drawn back to yourself, flitting about the surface of social interactions, never really engaging. Even in a crowd, you remain essentially alone. People come to serve a function—not to bond with but to placate your insecurities. Our brains were built for continual social interaction; the complexity of this interaction is one of the main factors that drastically increased our intelligence as a species. At a certain point, involving ourselves less with others has a net negative effect on the brain itself and atrophies our social muscle. To make matters worse, our culture tends to emphasize the supreme value of the individual and individual rights, encouraging greater self-involvement. We find more and more people who cannot imagine that others have a different perspective, that we are all not exactly the same in what we desire or think. You must try to run counter to these developments and create empathic energy. Each side of the spectrum has its peculiar momentum. Deep narcissism tends to sink you deeper, as your connection to reality lessens and you are unable to really develop your work or your relationships. Empathy does the opposite. As you increasingly turn your attention outward, you get constant positive feedback. People want to be around you more. You develop your

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  It scuttles a few feet and then pauses, goes back into a trance. “Get along, buddy,” he urges, giving it a prod. It does several push-ups, puts a leg in the air, and then moves of its own volition out from under the table and into the darkness. We play a few more hands of hearts, until I realize that we both want me to win and I still can’t manage it. The whole desert is disappointed. We fold our hands and practice being bored for a while. Our dogs are sleeping at home, two of them nose to nose and snoring, one off by herself, flat on her side, dreaming of me. The stars are no match for the wash of the moon, the night air is navy blue and coolish against our skin. The camper people are out of it. Their colored lanterns are dark now and the TV is on inside, the glow of Letterman and his guests reflected in the window. I can see a head framed in the light, surrounded by a frizz of hair. It’s the poodle, looking at stars. We clear the table and spread out a sleeping bag on it, flannel side up. This is the best way to watch the sky. Eric has his red flashlight and charts, I have my sweatshirt zipped and a Walkman with two pairs of headphones. It’s his turn to choose a tape so I’m waiting for something discordant and spooky but when he pushes the button it’s one of my favorites. Thank you, I mouth to him. He smiles, closes his eyes, and takes my hand. Side by side. He moves into the solitude of headphones and constellations. I am perched on planet Earth, Milky Way galaxy, who knows what universe. Way up there, satellites are parked with their motors running, and vivid rings of plasma do laps around Saturn. Way down here, there is only the terrible arch of the sky, the sagging moon, and nothing else. The earphones make my head feel like a hollow tube, full of horns and drums and a voice that echoes like green glass. I am alone inside my own skin and the edges of everything have begun to darken slightly, curling and browning, the beginnings of disintegration. Inside my chest a heart begins knocking to get out. I am alone down here, and up there, clinging to the spoke of a satellite, looking upward at the dark velvet, and downward at the dark velvet. There is nothing. Pockmarked and surly, the moon steps back and drops the curtain, darkens the theater for the stars.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I sat in the bachelors’ quarters and read their magazines (GENT GOES UNDERCOVER AT VASSAR! MY TEN YEARS AS A SEX-SLAVE OF THE AMAZONS OF THE WHITE NILE !). I fooled around with kids from school, played with dogs, read both papers front to back. Sometimes I just sat on a railing somewhere and looked up at the mountains. They were always in shadow. The sun didn’t make it up over the peaks before classes started in the morning, and it was gone behind the western rim by the time school let out. I lived in perpetual dusk. The absence of light became oppressive to me. It took on the weight of other absences I could not admit to or even define but still felt sharply, on my own in this new place. My father and my brother. Friends. Most of all my mother, whose arrival seemed to grow more and more distant rather than closer. In the weeks since Christmas she had delayed giving Dwight a definite answer. She wanted to be sure, she told me. Marrying Dwight meant quitting her job, giving up the house, really burning her bridges. She couldn’t rush into this one. I understood, but understanding did not make me miss her less. She made the world seem friendly. And somehow, with her, it was. She would talk to anyone, anywhere, in grocery stores or ticket lines or restaurants, drawing them out and listening to their stories with intense concentration and partisan outbursts of sympathy. My mother did not expect to find people dull or mean; she assumed they would be likeable and interesting, and they felt this assurance, and mostly lived up to it. On the bus ride from Salt Lake to Portland she had everybody talking and laughing until it seemed like some kind of party. One of the passengers, a woman who owned a store in Portland, even offered her a job and a room in her house until we found a place of our own, an offer my mother declined because she had a lucky feeling about Seattle. Now I saw her only when Dwight agreed to drive me down with him. He usually had reasons for leaving me behind, the paper route or schoolwork or something I had done wrong that week. But he had to bring me sometimes, and then he never let me out of his sight. He stuck close by and acted jovial. He smiled at me and put his hand on my shoulder and made frequent reference to fun things we’d done together. And I played along. Watching myself with revulsion, aghast at my own falsity yet somehow helpless to stop it, I simpered back at him and laughed when he invited me to laugh and confirmed all his lying implications that we were pals and our life together a good one. Dwight did this whenever it suited his purpose, and I never let him down.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Sometimes, not very often, I felt lonely. Then I would go home to Roy. ROY HAD TRACKED us down to Salt Lake a few weeks after we arrived. He took a room somewhere across town but spent most of his time in our apartment, making it clear that he would hold no grudges as long as my mother walked the line. Roy didn’t work. He had a small inheritance and supplemented that with disability checks from the VA, which he claimed he would lose if he took a job. When he wasn’t hunting or fishing or checking up on my mother, he sat at the kitchen table with a cigarette in his mouth and squinted at The Shooter’s Bible through the smoke that veiled his face. He always seemed glad to see me. If I was lucky he would put a couple of rifles in his Jeep and we’d drive into the desert to shoot at cans and look for ore. He’d caught the uranium bug from my mother. Roy rarely spoke on these trips. Every so often he would look at me and smile, then look away again. He seemed always deep in thought, staring at the road through mirrored sunglasses, the wind ruffling the perfect waves of his hair. Roy was handsome in the conventional way that appeals to boys. He had a tattoo. He’d been to war and kept a kind of silence about it that was full of heroic implication. He was graceful in his movements. He could fix the Jeep if he had to, though he preferred to drive halfway across Utah to a mechanic he’d heard about from some loudmouth in a bar. He was an expert hunter who always got his buck. He taught both my mother and me to shoot, taught my mother so well that she became a better shot than he was—a real deadeye. My mother didn’t tell me what went on between her and Roy, the threats and occasional brutality with which he held her in place. She was the same as ever with me, full of schemes and quick to laugh. Only now and then there came a night when she couldn’t do anything but sit and cry, and then I comforted her, but I never knew her reasons. When these nights were over I put them from my mind. If there were other signs, I didn’t see them. Roy’s strangeness and the strangeness of our life with him had, over the years, become ordinary to me. I thought Roy was what a man should be. My mother must have thought so too, once. I believed that I should like him, and pretended to myself that I did like him, even to the point of seeking out his company. He turned on me just one time.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  I asked him who he had to talk to about all of this, and he said he had no one. As I stood there looking at him, I had this sense that in this one man I was seeing what is missing with so many in our world. He was made for loving, connected relationships with others, but he’s cut off. Separated. Alone. But our disconnection isn’t just with each other. The Earth and Us My boys and I were at the beach recently searching for shells and unusual things that had floated to shore. We found a giant jellyfish (dead), hundreds of hermit crabs (alive), a baby shark (dead), and lots of starfish (which are alive but appear to be dead). We also found broken glass, pop cans, plastic bags, and candy wrappers, and at one point, when my boys ran ahead, I looked down and there at my feet was a used syringe. We’re disconnected from the earth. And we know it. Or at least we can feel it, even if we don’t have words for it. We have been given this responsibility to take care of our home, to carefully steward and order and manage it, and we’re in trouble. From oil to air to pollution to wetlands, we find ourselves in our bare feet on a beach, almost stepping on a needle. Notice the premise of many car commercials. How many of them deal in some way with getting out of the city and exploring nature? The makers of these commercials understand that we are alienated from the earth. Many people live in air-conditioned houses and apartments. We alter our air with electric machines. We spend vast sums of money and energy to change our air. And we drive in air-conditioned cars—the 8 percent of us in the world who have cars—to air-conditioned schools and offices and stores with tile floors and fluorescent lights. It’s even possible to go days without spending any significant time outside. And it’s still considered living. It’s easy to go for weeks and maybe even years without ever actually plunging your hands into soil. Into earth. Into dirt. But this car— this is the one, the one with the space for my cooler and the kayak that I don’t own. This is the car that will change things. Massive amounts of money are spent convincing us that this particular automobile will give us access to the mountains, streams, and deserts that we are unable to access at this moment. And when we make that trip, in that car, the one from the commercial, we will be connected with the earth. With our home.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I asked whether there was something else, besides the poems we had read, that made him want to talk to me now. I don’t know, he said, I just had to talk to someone, and he twisted his coffee cup slowly in circles as he spoke, the handle passing from one palm to the other. You don’t know what it’s like, he said, speaking my name, which startled me a little, I’m not sure why, making me feel again—just for a moment and like a kind of echo—how shocking it had been, years before, when my students first called me by my surname. It was so alien then, so little connected to who I was, though now it feels inevitable, the self I have become, perhaps, a diminished self, as it sometimes seems. You don’t know what it’s like, he went on, there’s no one I can talk to, it’s impossible here, and he catalogued for me the sources of comfort unavailable to him, his parents, his friends, the adults at school who, in the States, might have been turned to for support; and of course there were no public resources here, no community centers or networks he could seek out. What about online, I said, couldn’t you find people there, and he looked up at me sharply. Is that what you think I want, he asked, to meet someone online? I’m not interested in that, he said, and I realized from his tone that he had misunderstood me, that he thought I was suggesting hookup sites, when in fact I had something altogether different in mind, forums and chat rooms of which there are so many in America. But he seemed exasperated by this, too, making a little motion of dismissal with his hands. What good would that do, he said, I live here, not in America, and it’s impossible to live here. Besides, and here he leaned away from me again, resting his weight on the padded back of our booth, I’ve seen some of those sites, he said, I’ve seen what they talk about, television and pop songs and sex, do you think I have anything to say to them? There’s nothing for me there, he said, that’s not the life I want, that’s not what I want to be. And then, after a pause, Is that what all of them are like, he asked, leaning forward again, is that what it means to be this way? My confidence faltered at this; I had said the wrong thing, and now I felt myself under attack, or anyway drawn more decisively within the compass of his scorn. He knew nothing about me, about those aspects of my life there’s no reason for my students to guess at, even though I’m more open than is usual for my vocation, or for my trade, rather, though maybe it was a vocation once. He knew nothing about me, nothing about the appetites that sometimes shame me, and yet still I felt indicted, so that Of course not, I said much more sharply than I should have, and then clamped down on myself before I could say anything more. He drew back when I spoke, and I was sorry for what I had done. I put both of my hands around the cup in front of me, taking a deep breath as I pressed my palms against what warmth was left, and then, when I could speak more calmly, What is the life you want, I asked.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It’s not just that I’m afraid, he said, though I am afraid, you can say whatever you want but it’s scary, I don’t want people to change how they think of me. I know, I started to say, I didn’t mean, but he motioned with his hand to cut me off. It isn’t that, he said after a pause, I mean that’s not the main reason. He paused again, and the noise of the restaurant rose around us. I hadn’t been aware of it for some time, but now I heard the voices at the other tables, heard without understanding; they were jumbled, overlapping and indistinct, punctuated suddenly by an eruption of laughter in a far corner. When I was little, R. began, speaking more slowly than I had ever heard him speak, and almost with a different voice, muted and inward, a voice that though it addressed me didn’t welcome my company. When I was living in the Azores, he said, it was terrible, there was nothing to do, there were more cows around than people. I had maybe two friends, he said, and we lived so far away from everything I didn’t even get to see them very much, I only saw them at school. There were my sisters, but they were older, they didn’t want anything to do with me, and my parents—I don’t know, they were fine, I know you say I care too much about what they think but we’ve never been close, I’m not really sure they think about me all that much. All I did was watch TV, stupid cartoons or American shows, it was the only thing to do. There was only one person I was close to, and he wasn’t my friend, he was older, a friend of my father’s. We had known him forever, we called him uncle but he wasn’t our uncle, he was just my father’s friend. He was always nice, he would talk to me and ask me things and listen to me, he was the only person who made me feel like I was interesting. He was at our house a lot, he’d come over for dinner, and I was always happy to see him, more than happy, excited; I guess I had a crush on him, I don’t know, I didn’t think of it like that. When I was older, twelve or thirteen, we would go on walks while my mother was making dinner. It sounds weird now but it didn’t feel weird, my parents thought it was good for me, and it was for a while, I think, R. said, I mean I was happy. There was a place we used to go, near the American base, a field with a big concrete shell of a building. I don’t know what it was exactly, it was like a mall, there were three floors but only the skeleton, nothing else; it was something they started to build a long time ago and didn’t finish.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  How else to repay the boy who gave me my first pizza bagel but to become his shadow? The problem was that my English, at the time, was still nonexistent. I couldn’t speak to him. And even if I could what could I say? Where was I following him? To what end? Perhaps it was not a destination I sought, but merely a continuation. To stay close to Gramoz was to remain within the circumference of his one act of kindness, was to go back in time, to the lunch hour, that pizza heavy in my palm. One day, on the slide, Gramoz turned around, his cheeks puffed red, and shouted, “Stop following me, you freak! What the heck is wrong with you?” It was not the words but his eyes, squinted as if taking aim, that made me understand. A shadow cut from its source, I stopped at the top of the slide, and watched his shiny comb-over grow smaller and smaller down the tunnel, before vanishing, without a trace, into the sound of laughing children. — When I thought it was over, that I’d done my unloading, you said, pushing your coffee aside, “Now I have something to tell you.” My jaw clenched. This was not supposed to be an equal exchange, not a trade. I nodded as you spoke, feigning willingness. “You have an older brother.” You swept your hair out of your eyes, unblinking. “But he’s dead.” The children were still there but I no longer heard their small, perishable voices. We were exchanging truths, I realized, which is to say, we were cutting one another. “Look at me. You have to know this.” You wore a face. Your lips a violet line. You went on. You once had a son growing inside you, a son you had named, a name you won’t repeat. The son inside you started to move, his limbs running the circumference of your belly. And you sang and spoke to him, like you did to me, told him secrets not even your husband knew. You were seventeen and back in Vietnam, the same age I was sitting across from you. Your hands cupped now like binoculars, as if the past was something that needed to be hunted down. The table wet beneath you. You wiped it with a napkin, then kept going, telling of 1986, the year my brother, your son, appeared. How, four months into your pregnancy, when a child’s face becomes a face, your husband, my father, pressured by his family, forced you to abort him. “There was nothing to eat,” you went on, your chin still cupped over the table. A man on his way to the restroom asked to get by. Without looking up, you scooted over. “People were putting sawdust in the rice to stretch it. You were lucky if you had rats to eat.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Golde’s picture of marriage doesn’t match what we today in the West commonly refer to as intimacy. We’d be more inclined to call it domesticity (at best) or age-old oppression (at worst). In the past, when marriage was a more pragmatic institution, love was optional. Respect was essential. Men and women found emotional connection elsewhere, primarily in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and recreation; women connected through child rearing and borrowing sugar. Love within a marriage might develop over time but was not indispensable to the success of the family. Marriage used to be primarily a matter of economic sustenance, and it was a partnership for life. Mating today is a free-choice enterprise, and commitments are built on love. Intimacy has shifted from being a by-product of a long-term relationship to being a mandate for one. In companionate marriage, trust and affection have replaced respect as the relational pillar, bringing us to a place where the centrality of intimacy is unquestioned. The Ascendance of Intimacy The family therapist Lyman Wynne points out that “intimacy became recognized as a ‘need’ only when it became more difficult to achieve.” The advent of industrialization and the subsequent rise of urban living touched off a major shift in social structure. Work and family were separated, and so were we: we became more disconnected, more lonely, and more in need of meaningful contact. In contrast, when people live in close social networks they are more likely to seek space than intimate dialogue. When three generations live under one roof, everyone knows his place; the family members are more apt to abide by rules of formality that ensure privacy and discretion. Though much is shared, everyone gets to stake a claim on something personal—a private corner, a favorite coffee cup, a seat by the window, a quiet read in the loo. From Tokyo to Djibouti to Queens, New York, people who live in an extended family, or who are under the yoke of economic duress and forced to live in close quarters, tend not to seek greater closeness. When people live on top of each other, there is no isolation to transcend, and they are far less interested in embracing western, middle-class ideals of intimacy. Their lives are entwined enough as it is. Intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of increasing isolation. Our determination to “reach out and touch someone” has reached a peak of religious fervor. Just this morning as I was penning these thoughts my home phone rang; and when I didn’t answer, my cell phone chimed in. It was followed immediately by my computer beeping to let me know I had mail. After my private line joined the cacophony, I gave up and allowed myself to be “touched.” In our world of instant communication, we supplement our relationships with an assortment of technological devices in the hope that all these gizmos will strengthen our connections. This social frenzy masks a profound hunger for human contact.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Once it got boring I went for walks along the road, just far enough away that I could still see the tavern but Pearl couldn’t see me and would, I hoped, imagine herself abandoned, and become afraid. I stood on the roadside with my collar up and my hands in my pockets, watching the lights of passing cars. I was a murderer on the run, a drifter about to be swept up into the passion of a lonely woman . . . When I got tired of this I went back to the car. By now I would be lonely myself, dying to talk, but our official position was that we couldn’t stand each other. Pearl and I sat in our corners and stared out our windows until I couldn’t take another second of it; then I leaned over the seat and turned the radio on. Pearl warned me not to, but she didn’t really mean it. She wanted to listen to the radio as much as I did. We were both big fans of American Bandstand and the local product, Seattle Bandstand . She watched them at home. I watched them at the houses of kids along my route, staying for the length of a song and then tearing down the street to my next outpost, hooking papers over my head as I ran. I knew all the words to all the songs. So did Pearl. And as we sat in the darkness with music flooding the car we could not stop ourselves from singing along, at first privately, then together. Pearl didn’t have a good voice but I never ragged her about it. That would have been too low, like ragging her about her bald spot. Anyway, you didn’t need a good voice for the songs we liked; you needed timing and inflection. Pearl had these, and she could do backup and harmony. You can’t sing harmony without leaning close together, taking cues from a nod, a sudden narrowing of the eyes, an intake of breath, and when it’s going well you have to smile. There’s no way not to smile. We did some songs well—“To Know Him Is to Love Him,” “My Happiness,” “Mister Blue,” most of the Everly Brothers—and we sang them as if to each other, smiling, face to face. Until Dwight came out of the tavern. Then we turned off the radio and leaned back into our comers. Dwight walked toward the car with my mother following a few steps behind, her arms crossed, her eyes on the ground. She didn’t look like a winner now. Dwight got in smelling of bourbon. My mother stayed outside. She said she wouldn’t get in unless Dwight gave her the keys. He just sat there, and after a time she got in. As he pulled the car out of the lot my mother gnawed at her lower lip and watched the road come at us. “Please, Dwight,” she said. “Please, Dwight,” he mimicked.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Also washed ashore is some of the plane’s cargo, which includes a white volleyball printed with the Wilson brand name. He aptly names the ball “Wilson” and offhandedly adopts it as his mascot. g To his surprise, it begins to take on a life of its own, becoming the confidant for Noland’s innermost thoughts. One day, in a fit of impotent rage, Noland throws the ball into the sea, but then—realizing how deeply he has become attached to Wilson—he dives in to retrieve it. Back on the beach, he affectionately draws childlike facial features 65 (eyes, mouth and nose) on the round volleyball. h Wilson now becomes his most intimate companion, sharing his troubled thoughts, deepest yearnings and anguished feelings of loneliness and despair, as well as his joyful triumphs. Noland’s bonding with Wilson is eerily reminiscent of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz’s orphan ducklings and their powerful attachment (imprinting) to a white ball after their mother was removed from their life shortly after their hatching. 66 Once they were permanently bonded to the ball as their surrogate mother, they preferred it even to a live, soft, feathery mother duck. Finally, Hanks’s character realizes that the island is apparently outside of any shipping lanes and that he will never be rescued if he remains on it. In his ill-fated attempt to leave on a raft he has made, Wilson is swept away during a fierce storm, and Hanks is inconsolable in his grief. Face-to-face, soul-to-soul contact is a buffer against the raging seas of inner turmoil. It is what helps you calm any emotional turbulence. So, in spite of the vast primal power of the immobilizing and hyperarousal systems, therapists should recognize the power of facial recognition and social engagement in calming their clients, and in meeting people’s deepest emotional needs and motivating many behaviors, both conscious and unconscious. Lest I leave you in the lurch, Noland, at death’s door, is finally rescued. Upon returning home he takes all of the surviving packages and, traveling across the country, delivers them to their rightful owners. Yes, that’s right: face-to-face. Deprived of face contact (and even a person who is blind from birth uses his or her hands to “see” other faces), we are (like Hanks’s character) cast away, adrift from our deepest needs and sense of purpose in life. Most of us would go insane without some kind of face-to-face contact. Along with facial recognition, the sound, intonation and rhythm of the human voice (prosody) have an equally calming effect. Even with clients who cannot tolerate face-to-face contact, the sound of the therapist’s voice—like the mother’s cooing to her infant—can be deeply soothing and enveloping. In a revealing commentary, Dr. Horvitz, a leading computer scientist, recently demonstrated his voice-based system, which asks patients about their symptoms and responds with empathy.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Men and women found emotional connection elsewhere, primarily in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and recreation; women connected through child rearing and borrowing sugar. Love within a marriage might develop over time but was not indispensable to the success of the family. Marriage used to be primarily a matter of economic sustenance, and it was a partnership for life. Mating today is a free-choice enterprise, and commitments are built on love. Intimacy has shifted from being a by-product of a long-term relationship to being a mandate for one. In companionate marriage, trust and affection have replaced respect as the relational pillar, bringing us to a place where the centrality of intimacy is unquestioned. The Ascendance of Intimacy The family therapist Lyman Wynne points out that “intimacy became recognized as a ‘need’ only when it became more difficult to achieve.” The advent of industrialization and the subsequent rise of urban living touched off a major shift in social structure. Work and family were separated, and so were we: we became more disconnected, more lonely, and more in need of meaningful contact. In contrast, when people live in close social networks they are more likely to seek space than intimate dialogue. When three generations live under one roof, everyone knows his place; the family members are more apt to abide by rules of formality that ensure privacy and discretion. Though much is shared, everyone gets to stake a claim on something personal—a private corner, a favorite coffee cup, a seat by the window, a quiet read in the loo. From Tokyo to Djibouti to Queens, New York, people who live in an extended family, or who are under the yoke of economic duress and forced to live in close quarters, tend not to seek greater closeness. When people live on top of each other, there is no isolation to transcend, and they are far less interested in embracing western, middle-class ideals of intimacy. Their lives are entwined enough as it is. Intimacy has become the sovereign antidote for lives of increasing isolation. Our determination to “reach out and touch someone” has reached a peak of religious fervor. Just this morning as I was penning these thoughts my home phone rang; and when I didn’t answer, my cell phone chimed in. It was followed immediately by my computer beeping to let me know I had mail. After my private line joined the cacophony, I gave up and allowed myself to be “touched.” In our world of instant communication, we supplement our relationships with an assortment of technological devices in the hope that all these gizmos will strengthen our connections. This social frenzy masks a profound hunger for human contact. Tell Me How You Really Feel Interestingly, while our need for intimacy has become paramount, the way we conceive of it has narrowed.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  67 When a mother said that her child was having diarrhea, the animated face on the screen said, in a supportive tone, “Oh, no; sorry to hear that.” This simple acknowledgment put the woman at ease and helped her to interact with the program in a secure and empowered manner. One physician told Horvitz that “it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion … I have no time for that.” Perhaps this computer system is the equivalent of Chuck Noland’s volleyball. Its programmed “empathy” was certainly helpful but a meager substitute for the real thing. It is a depressing commentary on the growing alienation of our postmodern, twenty-four-hour texting culture. While so many of our young keep in touch with dozens of people every hour in cyber-relationships, authentic face-to-face engagement is clearly on an apocalyptic wane. How sad and disturbing that the physician believed he didn’t have the minuscule time for such basic and salutary human communication—contact that would help humanize them both. If practiced regularly, it might even help both patient and physician stave off Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. 68 Why Therapy Fails Many traumatized individuals, and especially those who have been chronically traumatized, live in a world with little or no emotional support, making them even more vulnerable. After a devastating event—be it violence, rape, surgery, war or an automobile accident—or in the aftermath of a childhood of protracted neglect and abuse, traumatized individuals, even those who share a residence with a friend, family member or intimate partner, tend to isolate themselves. Alternatively, they cling desperately to other people in the hope that they will somehow help and protect them. Either way, they are bereft of the real intimacy—the salubrious climate of belonging—that we all crave and need in order to thrive. Traumatized individuals are, at the same time, terrified of intimacy and shun it. So either way, avoidant or clinging, they are unable to maintain the balanced, stable and nurturing affiliations we all need, the egalitarian bond characterized by the Jewish theologian Martin Buber as the “I-thou” relationship. 6 9 When their loneliness becomes too stark, traumatically disconnected individuals may seek increasingly more unrealistic (and sometimes dangerous) “hook-ups.” They see each new relationship possibility (or impossibility) as providing the caring protection that will calm their inner anxieties and buoy up their fragile sense of self. Having had a neglectful or abusive childhood predisposes them to chaotic relationships. These individuals continue to look for love “in all the wrong places”—a folly the song reminds us of. Even when one’s idealized (fantasy) rescuers become abusive, one seems oblivious to the early signs of that abuse and becomes increasingly ensnared in a damaging liaison precisely because it is so familiar or “like family.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  In listening to Candace, it occurred to me that the word “safe” had more than one face. The psychologist Virginia Goldner makes an accurate distinction between the “flaccid safety of permanent coziness” and the “dynamic safety” of couples who fight and make up and whose relationship is a succession of breaches and repairs. It’s not by co-opting aggression but rather by owning it that sexual tension can freely romp—and can itself bring safety. Everyone Needs a Secret Garden In her landmark book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir writes, “Eroticism is a movement toward the Other, this is its essential character.” Yet in our efforts to establish intimacy we often seek to eliminate otherness, thereby precluding the space necessary for desire to flourish. We seek intimacy to protect ourselves from feeling alone; and yet creating the distance essential to eroticism means stepping back from the comfort of our partner and feeling more alone. I suggest that our ability to tolerate our separateness—and the fundamental insecurity it engenders—is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves. If cultivating separateness sounds harsh, let’s think of it instead as nurturing a sense of selfhood. The French psychologist Jacques Salomé talks about the need to develop a personal intimacy with one’s own self as a counterbalance to the couple. There is beauty in an image that highlights a connection to oneself, rather than a distance from one’s partner. In our mutual intimacy we make love, we have children, and we share physical space and interests. Indeed, we blend the essential parts of our lives. But “essential” does not mean “all.” Personal intimacy demarcates a private zone, one that requires tolerance and respect. It is a space—physical, emotional, and intellectual—that belongs only to me. Not everything needs to be revealed. Everyone should cultivate a secret garden. Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air. 3 The Pitfalls of Modern IntimacyTalk Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness We have no secrets, we tell each other everything. —Carly Simon, “We Have No Secrets”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  So, in spite of the vast primal power of the immobilizing and hyperarousal systems, therapists should recognize the power of facial recognition and social engagement in calming their clients, and in meeting people’s deepest emotional needs and motivating many behaviors, both conscious and unconscious. Lest I leave you in the lurch, Noland, at death’s door, is finally rescued. Upon returning home he takes all of the surviving packages and, traveling across the country, delivers them to their rightful owners. Yes, that’s right: face-to-face. Deprived of face contact (and even a person who is blind from birth uses his or her hands to “see” other faces), we are (like Hanks’s character) cast away, adrift from our deepest needs and sense of purpose in life. Most of us would go insane without some kind of face-to- face contact. Along with facial recognition, the sound, intonation and rhythm of the human voice (prosody) have an equally calming effect. Even with clients who cannot tolerate face-to-face contact, the sound of the therapist’s voice—like the mother’s cooing to her infant—can be deeply soothing and enveloping. In a revealing commentary, Dr. Horvitz, a leading computer scientist, recently demonstrated his voice-based system, which asks patients about their symptoms and responds with empathy. 67 When a mother said that her child was having diarrhea, the animated face on the screen said, in a supportive tone, “Oh, no; sorry to hear that.” This simple acknowledgment put the woman at ease and helped her to interact with the program in a secure and empowered manner. One physician told Horvitz that “it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion ... I have no time for that.” Perhaps this computer system is the equivalent of Chuck Noland’s volleyball. Its programmed “empathy” was certainly helpful but a meager substitute for the real thing. It is a depressing commentary on the growing alienation of our postmodern, twenty-four-hour texting culture. While so many of our young keep in touch with dozens of people every hour in cyber- relationships, authentic face-to-face engagement is clearly on an apocalyptic wane. How sad and disturbing that the physician believed he didn’t have the minuscule time for such basic and salutary human communication—contact that would help humanize them both. If practiced regularly, it might even help both patient and physician stave off Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia.