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 Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Rosa blushed but nodded assent. Time was passing. I suddenly realized I hadn’t explored what the group could offer Magnolia. I had been too enchanted by the promise of her largesse and the memory of that refrain: “You would lose them . . . I know how to use them. ” “You know, Magnolia, you should get something from the group too. You started the meeting by saying that what you want from the group is to be a good listener. But I’m impressed, very impressed, with what a good listener you already are. And a good observer too: look at the details you remember about Rosa’s blanket. So I don’t think you need a lot of help with learning to listen. How else can we help you in this group?” “Ah don’ know how dis group can help me.” “I heard a lot of good things said about you today. How does that feel?” “Well, natchally, dat feels good.” “But Magnolia, I have a hunch you’ve heard that before—that people have always loved you for how much you give. Why, the nurses were saying that very thing before the group met today—that you’ve raised a son and fifteen foster children and never stop giving.” “Not now. Ah can’t give nuthin’ now. Ah can’t move mah legs, and those bugs—” She shuddered suddenly, but her soft smile remained. “Ah don’t want to go back home no more.” “What I mean, Magnolia, is that it probably isn’t too helpful for others to tell you things about yourself that you already know. If we’re going to help you here, we need to give you something else. Maybe we’ve got to help you learn new things about yourself, give you some feedback about your blind spots, things you may not have known.” “Ah done tol’ you, Ah gets help by helpin’ other folks.” “I know that, and that’s one of the things I really like about you. But you know, it feels good to everyone to be helpful to others. Like Martin—look what it meant to him to help Rosa by being understanding;” “Dat Martin is sometin’. He don’ move too good, but he’s got a fine head on his shoulders, a real fine head.” “You do help others and you’re good at it. You’re a marvel, and I agree with Rosa, the hospital should hire you. But Magnolia,” I hesitated in order to give my words greater impact, “it would be good for others to be able to help you too. By being so totally giving, you don’t let others get help from helping you. When Rosa said she’d like to go home with you, I was thinking too how great it would be to be comforted by you all the time. I’d like that too.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Till he'd gone and married that Bertha Coutts, as if to spite himself. Some people do marry to spite themselves, because they're disappointed of something. And no wonder it had been a failure.--For years he was gone, all the time of the war: and a lieutenant and all: quite the gentleman, really quite the gentleman!--Then to come back to Tevershall and go as a gamekeeper! Really, some people can't take their chances when they've got them! And talking broad Derbyshire again like the worst, when she, Ivy Bolton, knew he spoke like any gentleman, _really_. Well well! So her ladyship had fallen for him! Well,--her ladyship wasn't the first: there was something about him. But fancy! A Tevershall lad born and bred, and she her ladyship in Wragby Hall! My word, that was a slap back at the high-and-mighty Chatterleys! But he, the keeper, as the day grew, had realised: it's no good! It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them. With a sudden snap the bleeding desire that had drawn him after her broke. He had broken it, because it must be so. There must be a coming together on both sides. And if she wasn't coming to him, he wouldn't track her down. He mustn't. He must go away, till she came. He turned slowly, ponderingly, accepting again the isolation. He knew it was better so. She must come to him: it was no use his trailing after her. No use! Mrs. Bolton saw him disappear, saw his dog run after him. "Well well," she said. "He's the one man I never thought of; and the one man I might have thought of. He was nice to me when he was a lad, after I lost Ted. Well well! Whatever would _he_ say if he knew!" And she glanced triumphantly at the already sleeping Clifford, as she stepped softly from the room. CHAPTER XI Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffrey's father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffrey's mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffrey himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices. So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds' nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R. A. She determined to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque furniture interested her.

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

  Never exposed to broad daylight, the spell of the other is preserved. There’s no need to worry that your friends won’t like him, since nobody knows about him. Affairs unfold in the margins of our lives, and are luxuriously free of the dental appointments, taxes, and bills. Then there are barriers to overcome. To see each other, you have to make an effort, sometimes a huge one. There are hoops to jump through, schedules to juggle, locations to secure, excuses to invent. And all that unflagging zeal repeatedly affirms the lovers’ importance to each other. Seen in this light, Doug’s transgression was an attempt to recapture what he once had with his wife and could not live without: a sense of importance, a relief from loneliness, and a feeling of robustness. You Can Go Home Again By the time the affair ends, Doug’s marriage is down to the bare bones. Doug and Zoë are cordial, respectful, even occasionally affectionate, but emotionally they have flatlined. They have grown accustomed to vagueness regarding his repeated absences. His overtures are few and far between, and he is distracted. He is afraid of unintentionally disclosing something with a slip of the tongue; his secrecy is taking up more and more acreage in their marriage, leaving him with few subjects he can freely discuss with Zoë: the kids, the president, and the weather. As we unravel what sparked Doug’s affair with Naomi, it becomes clear to me why he chose not to fight for her but instead to stay with his wife. Zoë is terra firma. At the same time, her ability to keep things in perspective gives her a certain ease; it’s not hard for her to sleep through the night, or to get up in the morning. Zoë doesn’t seek passion. She is rarely swept away. With Naomi, Doug may have found the single missing piece, but with Zoë he has the rest of the puzzle. Doug and I discuss how his ideal of marriage holds up to the reality of his own particular union. He wants heat and warmth in the same place. He wants the kitchen table to be an altar of carnal merging at night, and a sunny breakfast nook for pancakes with the kids the next morning. But Doug will probably never experience with Zoë the same intensity he has had with Naomi. Affairs have their own brand of passion. Secrecy, torment, guilt, transgression, danger, risk, and jealousy are highly combustible, a Molotov cocktail, an erotic explosion far too threatening in a home with children. As Doug becomes clearer about what he can reasonably expect from his marriage, a new set of questions arises. What are his options now that he has chosen to stay? Can he recognize his desires without having to act on them?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A young man describes his dark plight as follows: “I feel all alone in the universe, dissociated from the human race … I am not sure that I even exist … Everyone is part of the flower; I am still part of the root.” i It is not surprising that, try as they may, many traumatized clients are little able to receive support and caring from their well-intentioned therapists—not because they don’t want to, but because they are stuck in the primitive root of immobility with its greatly reduced capability for reading faces, bodies and emotions; they become cut off from the human race. For this reason such a client may not be readily calmed by the positive feelings and attitude of empathy the therapist provides, and may even perceive the therapist as a potential threat. Unable to recognize caring feelings in the face and posture of others, such a client finds it extremely difficult to feel that anyone is safe or can really be trusted. And when high hopes are placed on the therapist, one small misstep or inadvertent fumble on the latter’s part can bring the entire relationship crashing down. As highly dissociated and shut-down clients involuntarily retreat, they experience additional self-recrimination and shame . Tormented by this loss of control, they are unable to accept and respond to the warmth and security offered by their therapist and may engage in unproductive transference and “acting out.” The inherent disconnect that then occurs often leaves both client and therapist bewildered and frustrated, feeling that they are failing in their respective roles. The client may perceive this breakdown as a devastating confirmation of his or her inadequacy, adding to a lifetime of (many perceived) failures. Therapists may also feel confused, helpless, inadequate and self-reproaching. Such situations, where the two partners are locked against one another, can readily become intractable Gordian knots. These therapeutic cul-de-sacs may eventually result in termination of treatment. A Way Out Shut-down and dissociated people are not “in their bodies,” being, as we have seen, nearly unable to make real here-and-now contact no matter how hard they try. It is only when they can first engage their arousal systems (enough to begin to pull them up, out of immobility and dissociation), and then discharge that activation , that it becomes physiologically possible to make contact and receive support. Fortunately, there is a way to escape the immobilization system’s domination of the two less primitive systems—a way that healing practitioners must learn to exercise. This therapeutic solution is supported by Lanius and Hopper’s fMRI work mentioned earlier. 71 This compelling research, recording activity in the part of the brain associated with the awareness of bodily states and emotions, makes a clear differentiation between sympathetic arousal and dissociation in traumatized subjects.

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

  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. We no longer plow the land together; today we talk. We have come to glorify verbal communication. I speak; therefore I am. We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words. Many of my own patients wholeheartedly embrace this assumption when they complain, “We’re not close.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The loneliness of sex in a brothel! So that was why my classmates talked so much about it among themselves: they had to rid themselves of the solitude they experienced each time they faced a woman. An adolescent who is in the least bit shy, as I was, finds sex wretched and shameful. One day, I almost discovered intimacy. I had come during a busy period, and I had always refused to wait in line, for I needed to maintain the illusion that I was the only lover of a willing woman. After the disgusting promenade along the closed doors all besieged by waiting men, I was finally taken in by a thin little redhead with a sharp profile and enormous freckles all over her face. Nobody seemed to want her. I was often attracted, in spite of their ugliness, to women who had been ignored, for their expression of sadness made them seem less frightening and more attentive. She welcomed me joyfully and fussed over me and, for some unknown reason, called me her little pinhead. I was almost happy. The next time I came to the district, I made at once for her crib. My hesitant steps found it automatically. She recognized me, called me her little pinhead again, stroked my hair, and made no attempt to hurry me. Afterward, as she was not expecting many customers, we rested alongside each other on the couch. It was winter and the rain was falling outside. She had lit a brazier over which the water from her basin slowly rose in steam. The little room was comfortably warm and we were both nude. Such confident relaxation, only a yard away from the cold and the rain that beat against the door, added to my poise and happiness. She babbled all the while and kept asking questions, ordinary ones as well as some indiscreet ones. I lied a good deal, but answered willingly enough. Physically, I felt satisfied, not having been hurried, I had almost had time to exhaust the unbearable and painful tension with which all other girls had left me. It really was quite something to be chatting away with a woman, both of us nude, and the word “nude,” which I repeated over and over again to myself, seemed full of confused meanings. She took an interest in my life and seemed to admire me, and I had, at last, a feeling of sexual communion and of sharing my secret.

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

  He wrote her name down. “Why not?” he said suddenly, uncertainly. “Why the heck not.” He gave her a number and wandered off to another group of shooters. Dwight’s number was called early. He fired his ten rounds in rapid succession, hardly pausing for breath, and got a rotten score. A couple of his shots hadn’t even hit the paper. When his score was announced he handed my mother the rifle. “Where’d you get this blunderbuss, anyway?” he asked me. My mother answered. “A friend of mine gave it to him.” “Some friend,” he said. “That thing is a menace. You ought to get rid of it. It shoots wild.” He added, “The bore is probably rusted out.” “The bore is perfect,” I said. My mother’s number should have been called after Dwight’s, but it wasn’t. One man after another went up to the line while she stood there watching. I got antsy and cold. After a long wait I walked over to the river and tried to skip rocks. A mist drifted over the water. My fingers grew numb but I kept at it until the sound of rifle fire stopped, leaving a silence in which I felt too much alone. When I came back my mother had finished her turn. She was standing around with some of the men. Others were putting their rifles in their cars, passing bottles back and forth, calling to each other as they drove away into the dusk. “You missed me!” she said when I came up. I asked her how she had done. “Dwight brought in a ringer,” one of the men said. “Did you win?” She nodded. “You won? No kidding?” She struck a pose with the rifle. I waited while my mother joked around with the men, laughing, trading mild insults, flushed with cold and the pleasure of being admired. Then she said good- bye and we walked toward the car. I said, “I didn’t know you were a member of the NRA.” “I’m a little behind in my dues,” she said. Dwight and Pearl were sitting in the front seat with the ham between them. Neither of them spoke when we got in. Dwight pulled away fast and drove straight back to the house, where he clomped down the hall to his room and

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

  We lived in a boardinghouse in West Seattle. At night, if my mother wasn’t too tired, we took walks around the neighborhood, stopping in front of different houses to consider them as candidates for future purchase. We went for the biggest and most pretentious, sneering at ranches and duplexes—anything that smelled of economy. We chose half-timbered houses, houses with columns, houses with sculpted bushes in front. Then we went back to our room, where I read novels about heroic collies while my mother practiced typing and shorthand so she wouldn’t fall behind in her new job. Our room was in a converted attic. It had two camp beds and between them, under the window, a desk and chair. It smelled of mildew. The yellow wallpaper was new but badly hung and already curling at the edges. It was the kind of room that B-movie detectives wake up in, bound and gagged, after they’ve been slipped a Mickey. The boardinghouse was full of old men and men who probably only seemed old. Besides my mother only two women lived there. One was a secretary named Kathy. Kathy was young and plain and shy. She stayed in her room most of the time. When people addressed her she would look at them with a drowning expression, then softly ask them to repeat what they had said. As time went on, her pregnancy began to show through the loose clothes she wore. There didn’t seem to be a man in the picture. The other woman was Marian, the housekeeper. Marian was big and loud. Her arms were as thick as a man’s, and when she pounded out hamburger patties the whole kitchen shook. Marian went with a marine sergeant from Bremerton who was even bigger than she was but more gentle and soft-spoken. He had been in the Pacific during the war. When I kept after him to tell me about it he finally showed me an album of photographs he’d taken. Most of the pictures were of his buddies. Doc, a man with glasses. Curly, a man with no hair. Jesus, a man with a beard. But there were also pictures of corpses. He meant to scare me off the subject with these pictures but instead they made me more interested. Finally Marian told me to stop bothering him.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Our time’s about up, Myrna, but try something before we stop—the same exercise I asked you to do a couple of weeks ago. Just for a minute or two, think about something you and I could be doing together. Close your eyes; let some scene, any scene, appear. Describe it as it’s happening.” [Silence] “What do you see?” “Nothing.” “Force it. Make something happen.” “Okay, okay. I see us walking along. Talking. Enjoying ourselves. Some street in San Francisco, maybe Chestnut. I take your hand and lead you into a singles bar. You’re reluctant, but you come in with me. I want you to see it . . . see the scene . . . see with your own eyes that there are no suitable men there. It’s either singles bars or the Internet match services you mentioned last week. The Internet—that’s worse than the bars. Talk about impersonality! I can’t believe you’re really suggesting that to me. You expect me to form a relationship on the monitor screen, not even seeing the other person . . . not even—” “Go back to your fantasy. What do you see next?” “Fade to black—gone.” “So fast! What stopped you from staying with it?” “Don’t know. Felt cold and alone.” “You were with me. You took my hand. What feelings came up?” “Still felt alone.” “Got to stop, Myrna. One last question. Were the last few minutes different from the first part of the hour?” “No. It was the same. Frustrated.” “I felt more engaged—less space between us. You didn’t feel any of that?” “Maybe. Not sure. And I still don’t see the point of what we’re doing.” “Why do I keep feeling that there’s something in you that fights against seeing the point? Same time next Thursday?” Myrna heard chairs being moved, her footsteps crossing the room, the closing of the door. She turned onto 1-280. Waste of time and money, she thought. Shrinks. He’s just like all the rest. Well, not quite. At least he talks to me. For a moment she imagined his face: he smiling, holding his arms out to her, inviting her to come closer. Truth is, I like Dr. Lash. He’s in there with me—at least he seems to care about what happens to me and he’s active: he tries to keep things going—he goes halfway, he doesn’t leave me sitting in silence like the last two shrinks. She quickly brushed aside these images. He was always nagging her to keep track of her daydreams, especially those occurring on the drive to and from the therapy hour, and she was not about to tell him this corny stuff. Suddenly she heard his voice on the tape again. “Hello. This is Ernest Lash returning your call. Sorry to miss you, Desmond. Please try to reach me at 767-1735 between eight and ten this evening or in my office first thing tomorrow morning.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Talking. Enjoying ourselves. Some street in San Francisco, maybe Chestnut. I take your hand and lead you into a singles bar. You’re reluctant, but you come in with me. I want you to see it . . . see the scene . . . see with your own eyes that there are no suitable men there. It’s either singles bars or the Internet match services you mentioned last week. The Internet—that’s worse than the bars. Talk about impersonality! I can’t believe you’re really suggesting that to me. You expect me to form a relationship on the monitor screen, not even seeing the other person . . . not even— ” “Go back to your fantasy. What do you see next?” “Fade to black—gone.” “So fast! What stopped you from staying with it?” “Don’t know. Felt cold and alone.” “You were with me. You took my hand. What feelings came up?” “Still felt alone.” “Got to stop, Myrna. One last question. Were the last few minutes different from the first part of the hour?” “No. It was the same. Frustrated.” “I felt more engaged—less space between us. You didn’t feel any of that?” “Maybe. Not sure. And I still don’t see the point of what we’re doing.” “Why do I keep feeling that there’s something in you that fights against seeing the point? Same time next Thursday?” Myrna heard chairs being moved, her footsteps crossing the room, the closing of the door. She turned onto 1-280. Waste of time and money, she thought. Shrinks. He’s just like all the rest. Well, not quite. At least he talks to me. For a moment she imagined his face: he smiling, holding his arms out to her, inviting her to come closer. Truth is, I like Dr. Lash. He’s in there with me—at least he seems to care about what happens to me and he’s active: he tries to keep things going—he goes halfway, he doesn’t leave me sitting in silence like the last two shrinks. She quickly brushed aside these images. He was always nagging her to keep track of her daydreams, especially those occurring on the drive to and from the therapy hour, and she was not about to tell him this corny stuff. Suddenly she heard his voice on the tape again. “Hello. This is Ernest Lash returning your call. Sorry to miss you, Desmond. Please try to reach me at 767-1735 between eight and ten this evening or in my office first thing tomorrow morning. ” What’s going on? she wondered. She suddenly recalled that after leaving his office at the end of the last session and driving a half-block, she had realized he had forgotten to give her the tape and had returned for it. She had double-parked in front of the Victorian house and sprinted up its long stairway to his office on the second floor. Since she was his last hour of the day, she hadn’t worried about interrupting another patient.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The evening progressed, from game to game, and with songs between games. We danced a bit, not too much so as to remain proper, that is to say mainly folk dances and turn-of-the-century numbers, all considered, I gather, less lascivious than modern dancing. A lot of wit was wasted all around. In spite of my willingness and my promises, I found it impossible to feel that I was really a participant in any of the fun. I was always alien, a critical and bad-tempered stranger, and this business of remaining a spectator at a party gave me an unpleasant feeling of watching myself too. Would I ever become an actor? Certainly not, come what may, without some seriousness and bitterness. Meanwhile, I ate and drank a lot, and animal living, as often in my life, prevented me from losing face. All this lasted until after they all had their fill of food; dazzled by the lights and their own sleepiness, exhausted from so much collective excitement, they then decided, as the rhythm of the party had visibly slowed down, to call it a day. It was indeed late, and we decided on the spot which boy would take each girl home. Mina made me her choice, with somewhat of a show of authority, and appointed me to wait on her and on Ginou, like a knight in ancient times. The National Commissioner then gathered us together in a circle for the last time and we sang one more song in four parts, all about the brotherhood of the scouts. Once the last note had ceased to ring, in the silence that was still charged with emotion, the old scoutmaster uttered one last sentence, in a tone of severity, like a command: “Pathfinders, forever...” “Ready!” the others all answered, in a single voice. But I had not joined in the cry. The Commissioner, after that, became familiar again and shook us all by the hand, the left one, raising each time the right forearm with the fingers stiff in the scouts’ grip. As he stopped before me, he smiled rather pointedly, with an air of complicity: I should remember the advice he had given me.

• From White Oleander (1999)

  “You’ll get back together with your boyfriend,” she said, as if to soften the blow. “Don’t worry. He’ll wait for you.” “Sure,” I said. But I knew, nobody waited for anybody. THE NEXT NIGHT , Yvonne packed a few clothes, her horse, and her radio, but she left the picture of the TV actor in his frame on the dresser. Rena gave her some money, rolled up in a rubber band. We all waited on the front porch with her until Benito came by in his primer-gray Cutlass. Then she was gone. 31 [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] ON THE ANVIL OF AUGUST , the city lay paralyzed, stunned into stupidity by the heat. The sidewalks shrank under the sun. It was a landscape of total surrender. The air was chlorinated, thick and hostile, like the atmosphere of a dead planet. But in the front yard, the big oleander bloomed like a wedding bouquet, a sky full of pinwheel stars. It made me think of my mother. There was still no call from Susan. Many times, I’d wanted to call her and demand a meeting. But I knew better. This was a chess game. First the urgency, then the waiting. I would not run down the street after her, begging. I would develop my pieces and secure my defenses. I woke up very early now, to catch a few breaths of cool air before the heat set in. I stood on the porch and gazed at the giant oleander. It was old, it had a trunk like a tree. You just had to roast a marshmallow on one twig and you were dead. She’d boiled pounds of it to make the brew of Barry’s death. I wondered why it had to be so poisonous. Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms. So what did they need poison for? Couldn’t they just be bitter? They weren’t like rattlesnakes, they didn’t even eat what they killed. The way she boiled it down, distilled it, like her hatred. Maybe it was a poison in the soil, something about L.A., the hatred, the callousness, something we didn’t want to think about, that the plant concentrated in its tissues. Maybe it wasn’t a source of poison, but just another victim. By eight it was already too hot to be outside. I went back inside to make Tasha’s lunch. She was the new girl in Yvonne’s bed, thirteen, going to King Junior High, D track, summer term. Grave, silent, she had a vertical scar on her upper lip just healing. She flinched if people moved too fast near her. “You’ll do great,” I said, making her celery with peanut butter in the creases and a Granny Smith apple. “I’ll be watching.” I drove her to school in Niki’s truck, let her off in front of Thomas Starr King Junior High, watched her go in scared and small, her backpack hanging with key chains.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  “Look,” one of them said to me, “see that big building there. That was where they held a thousand of us. They kept us there three days without letting us go out or even leave the straw on which we slept...” “The smell was something...” They were almost proud of their stories and were already reconstructing their memories. “Look, that must be where poor Berdah...” Silence fell. It was a mistake to recall this detail. There were no traces of the machine-gun murder of poor Berdah, the clubfoot who straggled behind. All intent on the joy of returning to town, the men did not want to be reminded of things they could not joke about. Instead, they told me at length of the group-leader’s protest to the German officer who would not permit more than one man to go to the toilets at a time. The leader had proved, with figures in hand, that going there in turns would mean that each man could relieve himself only once every five days. Thus Jewish logic had triumphed over German force, they concluded. It was broad daylight when we reached the Roman aqueduct. As we passed under the enormous antique stone arches which cut across the same blue sky that its ancient builders had seen, I thought I was still dreaming. The men never stopped chattering. Again, they felt a group loyalty and that they were bound to each other by ties of affection. To me, however, they remained as alien as this historical monument. We stopped at the outskirts of the city. The driver could go no further. We paid him and walked toward the first houses. The city was motionless. We hesitated: how would we find it after our long separation? A door opened and a woman emerged with a can of milk. Everything was still in its place. One of the men rediscovered his tongue and his long frustrated desires. “Oh, a woman,” he exclaimed. After that, I went into hiding and thought only of saving my own skin. And I was fortunate, for I survived the raids and bombings until the final German collapse. ~ 6. THE INVENTORY ~

• From White Oleander (1999)

  I tried to recall the melodies of Debussy, the gamelan, Miles Davis, but the Who bass line pounded it right out of my head. To me this rock was just more faceless sex in a man’s world, up against a concrete wall behind bathrooms. Give me a Satie tone poem like light on a Monet haystack, or Brazilian Astrud like a Matisse line. Let me lie down in a half-shuttered room in the south of France with Matisse and the soft flutter of heavy-feathered white doves, their mild calls. Only a little time, Henri, before Picasso will come with his big boots. We should take our afternoon. I missed beauty. The Tujunga night with too many stars, Claire’s neck as she bent over me, checking my homework. My mother, swimming underwater in the pool in Hollywood, the melody of her words. All gone now. This was my life, the way it was. Loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. Across the room, Yvonne’s bed was empty, she had left with someone at about eleven to go to a party across the river. I sat up in bed, drawing by lamplight, chasing an indigo line of oil pastel on violet paper with a whispery silver. It was a boat, a dark canoe, on the shore of a moonless sea. There was no one in the boat, no oars, no sail. It made me think of the sunless seas of Kublai Khan and also of my mother’s Vikings sending their dead out on boats. I blew on my hands, rubbed them together. The furnace wasn’t working, Rena still hadn’t fixed it. We just wore sweaters all the time. “Cold?” she said. “In California? You joke.” They weren’t feeling it, out there braying to the records, drinking Hunter’s Brandy, some high-octane Russian specialty that tasted like vodka flavored with nails. I looked around the cramped, crowded room, like the stockroom of a Goodwill store. I imagined what my mother would say if she could see who I was now, her burning little artist. Just another used item in Rena’s thrift shop. You like that lamp with the bubbled green base? Name a price. How about the oil painting of the fat-cheeked peasant woman with the orange kerchief? For you, ten dollars. A bouquet of beaded flowers? Talk to Rena, she’d let you have it for seven-fifty. We had a furry Oriental rug, and a solid oak table, only slightly tilted, along with five unmatched chairs, special today. We had an enormous tiki salad set, and a complete Encyclopædia Britannica from 1962. We had three matted white cats, cat hair over everything, cat smell. All this, and an old-fashioned hi-fi in a fruitwood cabinet and a stack of records from the seventies higher than Bowie’s platform shoes. And our clothes, Mother, how do you like our clothes? Polyester tops and lavender hiphuggers, yellow shirts with industrial zippers.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  Fortunately, my thick African skin never allows me to blush. That day Bouli went down several grades in the esteem and friendship that I had begun to feel for him. I saw clearly that my cutting myself off entirely from my own original background did not necessarily allow me to enter any other group. Just as I sat on the fence between two civilizations, so would I now find myself between two classes; and I realized that, in trying to sit on several chairs, one generally lands on the floor. It was then that I discovered a terrible and marvelous secret which might perhaps make my loneliness bearable. To unburden myself of the weight of the world, I began to put everything on paper, and that is how I began to write and to experience the wonderful pleasure of mastering a whole life by recreating it. Of course, this power was as fatal as it was redeeming. To describe people, I had to be an outsider and I could no longer be a part of the world I contemplated. Just as one ceases to live while one watches a play, so did I cease to live and now merely wrote. For my loneliness, it was a balm, but my new loneliness became deeper too because I was more conscious of it and accepted it. In any gathering, I found myself with my back to the wall, an outsider in every respect, alien to the joys of the others as well as to their sorrows. This was a bitter experience, but I still had too much hope to be afraid of my lucid detachment. I was, in fact, arrogantly delighted by its novelty. Thus began my hand-to-hand struggle with language, if only because my pronunciation of the French r and of the nasals was wrong. Dimly, I felt that I would penetrate into the soul of this civilization by mastering its language. I wrote without pause and was never satisfied because I saw that I nearly always worked on the skin of things and failed to reach the flesh. I sometimes asked myself riddles: what is the right word for such and such a thing? It seemed to me that objects would remain foreign to me until I was able to name them correctly. So I often sought a particular word for a long while, questioning everyone around me. When I had found the word, I would repeat it over and over in a loud voice, like an incantation. I had grasped the “thing” and could invoke it at will: a part of the world was subjected to me.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  illustrious house, and one of the best-bred men of his day, but ill endowed by fortune, and of so little comeli- ness that no one but herself would have readily chosen him for a lover. As this poor gentleman had remained solitary like herself, and as the unfortunate naturally seek each other's society, he one day accosted Rolan- dine. There being a strong similitude between them in point of temperament and fortune, they poured their griefs into each other's ears, and that was the beginnin-g of a very intimate friendship between them. Seeing that they both laboured under the same misfortune, they everywhere sought each other out for mutual consola- tion, and thus they became more and more attached to each other to an extraordinary degree. Those who had known Roland ine so coy that she would hardly speak to anyone were shocked to see her every moment with the bastard, and told her gouvernante that she ought not to permit such long conversations. The gouvernante spoke to Rolandine on the subject, telling her that it was taken amiss that she should be on such familiar terms with a man who was neither rich enough to marry her, nor good- looking enough to beloved. Rolandine, who had hitherto been reproved for her austerity rather than for her mundane ways, replied, " You see, mother, that I cannot have a husband of my own quality. I have hitherto always attached myself to the young and good-looking ; but as I am afraid of falling into the pit into which I have seen so many fall, I now attach myself to this gentleman, who, as you know, is so correct and so vir- tuous that he never talks to me but of seemly things. What harm, then, do I do to you, and to those who make a talk about it, consoling my sorrows by means of an innocent converse .-* " The poor woman, who loved her mistress more than 13 194 T^HE HEPTAMERON OF THE \N(rvel 2\ herself, made answer, " I see plainly, mademoiselle, that you are right, and that your father and your mistress do not treat 3'ou as you deserve. But since this acquaint- ance gives rise to remarks which are not to the advan- tage of your honour, you ought to break it off, though the man were your own brother." " I will do so, since such is your advice," replied Rolandine, weeping, " but it is very hard to have no con- solation in the world."

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Come on, quit being coy.” I rubbed my face, feeling a little sleepy. Where to start … “Well, let’s see. My first experience with S/M was with Sue. And she had to hound me for months to tie her up and spank her. I insisted that she do it to me first, so I could be sure it was okay. Surprise, surprise, I found out I really like it, so I reciprocated, and we kept fooling around with it, but not doing anything heavy. I started suggesting we move into it a little further. That made her uneasy. When I bought her a leather paddle, she freaked out. For some reason, that was sick. We eventually broke up, ostensibly over class differences, and there was nobody to talk to. I think I tried once to explain it to this friend of mine, my best friend, in fact. We had known each other since college, when we both came out during the same semester. So I was trying to describe this new component of myself I had begun to unearth, and she freaked out, too. She said something like, ‘After the months I’ve worked at the rape crisis center, I can’t stand to listen to this,’ and ran like a bunny. The next time I called up a few of my other old friends, they treated me with what I thought was distaste. Sue was not telling people about our class differences, it seemed. So I gave up calling anybody I used to know.” “Sounds familiar,” Jessie said. “Where did you go from there?” “I spent about a month just going to my shop and coming straight home. Staring at TV. Then I got disgusted with myself and fed myself a couple of drinks and drove myself down to one of the men’s leather bars. I was lucky the first time—it was real crowded, and the bartender didn’t spot me, so I hung out all night, tucked behind the jukebox, taking everything in a mile a minute. The next time I went there, it wasn’t so busy, and they kicked me out. So I went down the block to the next bar. It was real hard. But I kept thinking, there must be other women like me somewhere, I can’t be the only one, and sooner or later they’ll show up here, too. Because there is no place else to go.” I paused to take a deep breath, but Jessie didn’t say a word. She was fascinated. I wondered how much of my story was her story. “Well, one night I was having a terrible time. I had hit my three favorite places. None of the bartenders I’d managed to make friends with were on duty, and none of the men I had met were there to vouch for me, so I got bounced out.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  The whole adventure began very badly. It was the first time in my life that I was going away so far and for so long from my family and the blind alley. At the collecting point, I found none of my classmates. We were alone in a crowd of Europeans who were waiting in the shade of the trees and joyously shouting remarks from group to group. The loneliness of my parents, silent and scared, moved me even more deeply than my own. I was seeing them, for the first time, uneasy and ashamed, with all their prestige left behind them in our blind alley. They spoke in muffled tones, probably ashamed of their dialect, which, to me, now seemed vulgar and out of place. As a precaution, we had been asked to turn up much too early and now we had to wait for quite a while. The last cool morning breeze vanished and a humid heat began to weigh on us while the flies buzzed ever more insistently. People who had to go in the sunlight ran from one patch of shade to the next. My father no longer uttered a word. I felt that he was exasperated by weariness, heat, the flies, and a sense of alienation. My mother’s face betrayed, by its softness, that she was on the verge of tears, and her lips were beginning to relax when, at long last, the signal for our departure came. We were then loaded in closed military trucks. I found myself cornered at the back of a truck, no longer able to see my parents for a last farewell. Later, I often experienced this strange feeling of being quite close to them and at the same time kept irremediably apart from them. Only then did the tears at last come to my eyes. The trip was very unpleasant. We had to stand for five hours, our fifty breaths flowing together as we almost stifled beneath the painted tarpaulin of the truck. In near-darkness we were brutally jostled against each other at every bump in the road, while the vibration of the truck made the soles of our feet tingle and made me sick at my stomach. I reached our destination in such a state of exhaustion that I fell asleep at once, barely glancing at the impersonal dormitory in which I had been assigned a bed. I was ten years old, as I’ve said, and an only son. I indeed had my sister Kalla, but in our families the son, especially an only son, is truly a privileged being. For a long while, I actually expected to hear God speak to me personally, and my heart often beat faster if I thought that I could distinguish a voice speaking in the rustling of tree leaves. Always encouraged and confirmed in my awareness of superiority, I was convinced that an extraordinary destiny awaited me.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  I was not permitted to light the fire for my breakfast, and Saturday thus preserved its holiday character. I was the only one of the family who got up early, in the cold semidarkness of dawn, and ate alone in the kitchen and then hurried off to school, the only one in whose eyes Sabbath had therefore lost much of its sanctity and beauty, becoming a day of ordinary routine. But I found all the Sabbath spirit again at noon, when the family came to the table where a vase of fading narcissus stood on the white cloth while the friendly sun poured in. Our clothes were new and the family gathering respected the mood of this special day. It seemed that last night’s incident had been forgotten. Left with my victory and the shame of having acted violently, I now wanted peace. The meal was slow and relaxed. When we reached the dessert, the children began to ask for their week’s pocket money, a pleasant little ceremony of ours. After the noon meal, we would thus gather around our father, joke, vie with each other, discuss the events of our week, and joyfully anticipate the film we would see in the afternoon. My father, despite his unwillingness to extract any money from his pocket, enjoyed his momentary importance. Surrounded by the clamoring group, he now pretended to be overwhelmed and began to utter his usual arguments about how hard life was; but there was no bitterness in his voice and no one was fooled. Even my mother, acting like a child, joined in the crowd to claim her share of money. In spite of myself, I had been left out of this ceremony ever since I had begun earning my own pocket money. In general, I protested and made sarcastic remarks to show my disapproval; because I felt excluded, I became aggressive. Actually, my frustration made me suffer; but so did my independence too. I was proud of my own paradox when I said, as usual, that we seemed to be inspired by a sacred joy to commit a sacrilegious act. Jewish law indeed forbade us to touch money on the Sabbath, and the ghetto was still shocked if anyone did it. That particular day, however, I said nothing. I lingered at the table, alone and bored as I cut orange skins into geometric shapes, squares, diamonds and rectangles, building orange architectural patterns against the white background. The children had cornered my father and compared their ages and respective merits as they protested loudly against the unfairness of their share of the loot.

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

  In the foster-care world, “permanency” is a big buzzword. The motto is “One caring adult—that’s all you need.” However, it is natural for teenagers to pull away from adults, and Griffin remarks that the best form of permanency for teens is a steady group of friends—which the program is designed to provide. Another foster-care buzzword is “independence,” which Paul counters with “interdependence.” “We’re all interdependent,” he points out. “The idea that we’re asking our young people to go out in the world completely alone and call themselves independent is crazy. We need to teach them how to be interdependent, which means teaching them how to have relationships.” Paul found that foster-care youth are natural actors. Playing tragic characters, you have to express emotions and create a reality that comes from a place of depth and sorrow and hurt. Young people in foster care? That’s all they know. It’s life and death every day for them. Over time, collaboration helps the kids become important people in one another’s lives. Phase one of the program is group building. The first rehearsal establishes basic agreements: responsibility, accountability, respect; yes to expressions of affection, no to sexual contact in the group. They then begin singing and moving together, which gets them in sync. Now comes phase two: sharing life stories. They are now listening to one another, discovering shared experiences, breaking through the loneliness and isolation of trauma. Paul gave me a film that shows how this happened in one group. When the kids are first asked to say or do something to introduce themselves, they freeze, their faces expressionless, their eyes cast down, doing anything they can to become invisible. As they begin to talk, as they discover a voice in which they themselves are central, they also begin to create their own show. Paul makes it clear the production depends on their input: “If you could write a musical or play, what would you put in it? Punishment? Revenge? Betrayal? Loss? This is your show to write.” Everything they say is written down, and some of them start to put their own words on paper. As a script emerges, the production team incorporates the students’ precise words into the songs and dialogue. The group will learn that if they can embody their experiences well enough, other people will listen. They will learn to feel what they feel and know what they know. The focus changes naturally as rehearsals begin. The foster kids’ history of pain, alienation, and fear is no longer central, and the emphasis shifts to “How can I become the best actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, or lighting and set designer I can possibly be?” Being able to perform becomes the critical issue: Competence is the best defense against the helplessness of trauma.