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 Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  158 “Everything becomes machine-like,” one soldier wrote; “one might almost term the war an industry of professionalized human slaughter.” 159 It is a telling indictment of the loneliness and segmentation of modern society that many of these soldiers never forgot the profound sense of community they experienced in the trenches. “There enwrapped us, never to be lost, the sudden comradeship of the ranks,” T. E. Lawrence recalled. 160 One of Simone de Beauvoir’s professors “discovered the joys of comradeship which overcome all social barriers” and determined never again to submit to “the segregation which in civil life separates young middle-class men from working chaps … something he felt like a personal mutilation.” 161 Many found that they could not even hate the invisible enemy and were shocked when they finally saw the people they had been shelling for months. “They were showing themselves to us as they really were, men and soldiers like us, in uniform like us,” an Italian soldier explained. 162 This secular war for the nation had given some of the participants experiences associated with the religious traditions: an ekstasis, a sense of liberation, freedom, equanimity, community, and a profound relationship with other human beings, even the enemy. Yet the First World War heralded a century of unprecedented slaughter and genocide that was inspired not by religion as people had come to know it but by an equally commanding notion of the sacred: men fought for power, glory, scarce resources, and above all, their nation.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Herman Koopman also has a filthy mind, just like Jopie de Beer, who’s a terrible flirt and absolutely girl-crazy. Leo Blom is Jopie de Beer’s best friend, but has been ruined by his dirty mind. Albert de Mesquita came from the Montessori School and skipped a grade. He’s really smart. Leo Slager came from the same school, but isn’t as smart. Ru Stoppelmon is a short, goofy boy from Almelo who transferred to this school in the middle of the year. C.N. does whatever he’s not supposed to. Jacques Kocernoot sits behind us, next to C., and we (G. and I) laugh ourselves silly. Harry Schaap is the most decent boy in our class. He’s nice. Werner Joseph is nice too, but all the changes taking place lately have made him too quiet, so he seems boring. Sam Salomon is one of those tough guys from across the tracks. A real brat. (Admirer!) Appie Riem is pretty Orthodox, but a brat too. SATURDAY, JUNE 20,1942 Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest. “Paper has more patience than people.” I thought of this saying on one of those days when I was feeling a little depressed and was sitting at home with my chin in my hands, bored and listless, wondering whether to stay in or go out. I finally stayed where I was, brooding. Yes, paper does have more patience, and since I’m not planning to let anyone else read this stiff-backed notebook grandly referred to as a “diary,” unless I should ever find a real friend, it probably won’t make a bit of difference. Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don’t have a friend. Let me put it more clearly, since no one will believe that a thirteen year-old girl is completely alone in the world. And I’m not. I have loving parents and a sixteen-year-old sister, and there are about thirty people I can call friends. I have a throng of admirers who can’t keep their adoring eyes off me and who sometimes have to resort to using a broken pocket mirror to try and catch a glimpse of me in the classroom. I have a family, loving aunts and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything, except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  I’m not planning to let anyone else read this stiff-backed notebook grandly referred to as a “diary,” unless I should ever find a real friend, it probably won’t make a bit of difference. Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don’t have a friend. Let me put it more clearly, since no one will believe that a thirteen year-old girl is completely alone in the world. And I’m not. I have loving parents and a sixteen-year-old sister, and there are about thirty people I can call friends. I have a throng of admirers who can’t keep their adoring eyes off me and who sometimes have to resort to using a broken pocket mirror to try and catch a glimpse of me in the classroom. I have a family, loving aunts and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything, except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem. Maybe it’s my fault that we don’t confide in each other. In any case, that’s just how things are, and unfortunately they’re not liable to change. This is why I’ve started the diary. To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do, but I want the diary to be my friend, and I’m going to call this friend Kitty. Since no one would understand a word of my stories to Kitty if I were to plunge right in, I’d better provide a brief sketch of my life, much as I dislike doing so. My father, the most adorable father I’ve ever seen, didn’t marry my mother until he was thirty-six and she was twenty-five. My sister Margot was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1926. I was born on June 12, 1929. I lived in Frankfurt until I was four. Because we’re Jewish, my father immigrated to Holland in 1933, when he became the Managing Director of the Dutch Opekta Company, which manufactures products used in making jam. My mother, Edith Hollander Frank, went with him to Holland in September, while Margot and I were sent to Aachen to stay with our grandmother. Margot went to Holland in December, and I followed in February, when I was plunked down on the table as a birthday present for Margot. I started right away at the Montessori nursery school. I stayed there until I was

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  . . . Still, this hasn’t been my greatest disappointment. No, I think about Peter much more than I do Father. I know very well that he was my conquest, and not the other way around. I created an image of him in my mind, pictured him as a quiet, sweet, sensitive boy badly in need of friendship and love! I needed to pour out my heart to a living person. I wanted a friend who would help me find my way again. I accomplished what I set out to do and drew him, slowly but surely, toward me. When I finally got him to be my friend, it automatically developed into an intimacy that, when I think about it now, seems outrageous. We talked about the most private things, but we haven’t yet touched upon the things closest to my heart. I still can’t make head or tail of Peter. Is he superficial, or is it shyness that holds him back, even with me? But putting all that aside, I made one mistake: I used intimacy to get closer to him, and in doing so, I ruled out other forms of friendship. He longs to be loved, and I can see he’s beginning to like me more with each passing day. Our time together leaves him feeling satisfied, but just makes me want to start all over again. I never broach the subjects I long to bring out into the open. I forced Peter, more than he realizes, to get close to me, and now he’s holding on for dear life. I honestly don’t see any effective way of shaking him off and getting him back on his own two feet. I soon realized he could never be a kindred spirit, but still tried to help him break out of his narrow world and expand his youthful horizons. “Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.” I read this in a book somewhere and it’s stuck in my mind. As far as I can tell, it’s true. So if you’re wondering whether it’s harder for the adults here than for the children, the answer is no, it’s certainly not. Older people have an opinion about everything and are sure of themselves and their actions. It’s twice as hard for us young people to hold on to our opinions at a time when ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when the worst side of human nature predominates, when everyone has come to doubt truth, justice and God. Anyone who claims that the older folks have a more difficult time in the Annex doesn’t realize that the problems have a far greater impact on us. We’re much too young to deal with these problems, but they keep thrusting themselves on us

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  “Father and Mother Don’t Understand Me.” My parents have always spoiled me rotten, treated me kindly, defended me against the van Daans and done all that parents can. And yet for the longest time I’ve felt extremely lonely, left out, neglected and misunderstood. Father did everything he could to curb my rebellious spirit, but it was no use. I’ve cured myself by holding my behavior up to the light and looking at what I was doing wrong. Why didn’t Father support me in my struggle? Why did he fall short when he tried to offer me a helping hand? The answer is: he used the wrong methods. He always talked to me as if I were a child going through a difficult phase. It sounds crazy, since Father’s the only one who’s given me a sense of confidence and made me feel as if I’m a sensible person. But he overlooked one thing: he failed to see that this struggle to triumph over my difficulties was more important to me than anything else. I didn’t want to hear about “typical adolescent problems,” or “other girls,” or “you’ll grow out of it.” I didn’t want to be treated the same as all-the-other-girls, but as Anne-in-her-own-right, and rim didn’t understand that. Besides, I can’t confide in anyone unless they tell me a lot about themselves, and because I know very little about him, I can’t get on a more intimate footing. rim always acts like the elderly father who once had the same fleeting im-pulses, but who can no longer relate to me as a friend, no matter how hard he tries. As a result, I’ve never shared my outlook on life or my long-pondered theories with anyone but my diary and, once in a while, Margot. I’ve hid anything having to do with me from Father, never shared my ideals with him, deliberately alienated myself from him. I couldn’t have done it any other way. I’ve let myself be guided entirely by my feelings. It was egotistical, but I’ve done what was best for my own peace of mind. I would lose that, plus the self-confidence I’ve worked so hard to achieve, if I were to be subjected to criticism halfway through the job. It may sound hard- hearted, but I can’t take criticism from rim either, because not only do I never share my innermost thoughts with him, but I’ve pushed him even further away by being irritable. This is a point I think about quite often: why is it that rim annoys me so much sometimes? I can hardly bear to have him tutor me, and his affection seems forced. I want to be left alone, and I’d rather he ignored me for a while until I’m more sure of myself when I’m talking to him! I’m still torn with guilt about the mean letter I wrote him when I was so upset. Oh, it’s hard to be strong and brave in every way!

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  He has his own room, where he can work, dream, think and sleep. I’m constantly being chased from one corner to another. I’m never alone in the room I share with Dussel, though I long to be so much. That’s another reason I take refuge in the attic. When I’m there, or with you, I can be myself, at least for a little while. Still, I don’t want to moan and groan. On the contrary, I want to be brave! Thank goodness the others notice nothing of my innermost feelings, except that every day I’m growing cooler and more contemptuous of Mother, less affection- ate to Father and less willing to share a single thought with Margot; I’m closed up tighter than a drum. Above all, I have to maintain my air of confidence. No one must know that my heart and mind are constantly at war with each other. Up to now reason has always won the battle, but will my emotions get the upper hand? Sometimes I fear they will, but more often I actually hope they do! Oh, it’s so terribly hard not to talk to Peter about these things, but I know I have to let him begin; it’s so hard to act during the daytime as if everything I’ve said and done in my dreams had never taken place! Kitty, Anne is crazy, but then these are crazy times and even crazier circumstances. The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings; otherwise, I’d absolutely suffocate. I wonder what Peter thinks about all these things? I keep thinking I’ll be able to talk to him about them one day. He must have guessed something about the inner me, since he couldn’t possibly love the outer Anne he’s known so far! How could someone like Peter, who loves peace and quiet, possibly stand my bustle and noise? Will he be the first and only person to see what’s beneath my granite mask? Will it take him long? Isn’t there some old saying about love being akin to pity? Isn’t that what’s happening here as well? Because I often pity him as much as I do myself! I honestly don’t know how to begin, I really don’t, so how can I expect Peter to when talking is so much harder for him? If only I could write to him, then at least he’d know what I was trying to say, since it’s so hard to say it out loud!

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

  CHAPTER 5 The Grief Game I lived at home with my family until I left for college, where I lived with the same four roommates for the duration of my time there. Within weeks of graduating, Michael and I moved into our first apartment together on the Upper West Side, close to Columbia University, where he earned a Master’s degree in architecture while I started my career in book publishing. There had been two brief periods in which I had been on my own, each time for two months during the summer when he worked as an intern in faraway cities, and I busied myself with weekends at friends’ beach shares or with my parents in the suburbs, as if staying home alone was not a viable option. The most vivid memory I have of those months alone is buying an Entenmann’s low-fat raspberry Danish and thinking how thrilling it was that a) Entenmann’s now had a line of low-fat baked goods and b) that I would be the only one eating it. That was the extent to which I had recognized my independence and took advantage of my freedom. I had known that Michael would be back soon and for good, so it felt a bit like when my parents used to leave us in the house as teens when they went on tropical vacations. It had felt like I was playing an adult living on her own more than I really was one, but I understand now that my current state of aloneness is permanent. It doesn’t feel exciting to me, just scary and lonely. Early Tuesday morning, I drive to Pennsylvania to meet my childhood friend Jessica, who is treating me to a few nights at a spa. For years, she has tried to convince me to go away for a few days, but she knew that much as I craved a break from my kids, I would never take one. Partly out of anxiety from being away from them, partly from the difficulty of getting childcare since Michael worked such long and erratic hours, and partly because I would not give up control of their care for even a day if it wasn’t imperative. First and foremost, I was at all times a mother, and stepping away from that role to do something just for myself was inconceivable; even thinking about it used to flood me with guilt. Our first afternoon at the spa, we throw ourselves into the Zen spirit of the place and take a mala bead meditation class. The instructor says we will go around in a circle and express what we are hoping to achieve with this meditation. She starts the circle by sharing that she is grappling with a huge loss that’s been very difficult for her to talk about, the recent passing of her tabby cat. As soon as the words leave her mouth, I panic that I will burst into uncontrollable nervous laughter if I look at Jess.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  me more than a year to get used to doing without admiration. How did they see me at school? As the class comedian, the eternal ringleader, never in a bad mood, never a crybaby. Was it any wonder that everyone wanted to bicycle to school with me or do me little favors? I look back at that Anne Frank as a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl, who has nothing to do with me. What did Peter say about me? “Whenever I saw you, you were surrounded by a flock of girls and at least two boys, you were always laughing, and you were always the center of attention!” He was right. What’s remained of that Anne Frank? Oh, I haven’t forgotten how to laugh or toss off a remark, I’m just as good, if not better, at raking people over the coals, and I can still flirt and be amusing, if I want to be . . . But there’s the catch. I’d like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I’d be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful. I want friends, not admirers. Peo- ple who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile. The circle around me would be much smaller, but what does that matter, as long as they’re sincere? In spite of everything, I wasn’t altogether happy in 1942; I often felt I’d been deserted, but because I was on the go all day long, I didn’t think about it. I enjoyed myself as much as I could, trying consciously or unconsciously to fill the void with jokes. Looking back, I realize that this period of my life has irrevocably come to a close; my happy-go-lucky, carefree schooldays are gone forever. I don’t even miss them. I’ve outgrown them. I can no longer just kid around, since my serious side is always there. I see my life up to New Year’s 1944 as if I were looking through a powerful magnifying glass. When I was at home, my life was filled with sunshine. Then, in the middle of 1942, everything changed overnight. The quarrels, the accusations -- I couldn’t take it all in. I was caught off guard, and the only way I

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Bible tells us that 42,360 Judeans made the journey home, together with their servants and two hundred temple singers, 58 but in fact the first batch of returnees was probably quite small, since most of the exiles chose to stay in Babylon. 59 The leader of the returning party was Sheshbazzar, the nasi (“vassal king”) of Judah. We know nothing about him. He may have been a member of the Davidic royal house, and if so, he would have kissed Cyrus’s hands as a sign of fealty and was the official representative of the Persian government. Judah had become part of the fifth province (satrapy) of the Persian empire, which comprised all territories west of the Euphrates. We know almost nothing about these early years in Judah, since the biblical account is confused and incomplete. Sheshbazzar disappeared from the record, and we have no idea what happened to him. We hear nothing more about the Golah, the community of returned exiles, until 520, the second year of the reign of Darius (521–486), the third Persian emperor. The leader of the Judean community in Jerusalem was now Zerubbabel, the grandson of King Jehoiachin, who shared power with Joshua, the high priest. He too disappeared mysteriously after his term of office, and for fifty years we have no information about events in Judah. If the Golah had arrived in Judah with the prophecies of Second Isaiah ringing in their ears, they must have come down to earth very quickly when they saw their new home. Most of them had been born in exile, and Judah would have seemed bleak, alien, and desolate after the sophistication of Babylonia. Used to the Babylonian way of life, they must have felt like foreigners in their own land. The country was full of strangers, who, like themselves, had lost their national status after the Babylonian wars, and while they had been away, Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Arabs, and Phoenicians had settled in the coastal plain, the Jezreel Valley, and the highlands. The returnees called them all the am ha-aretz, “the people of the land.” The new arrivals were also reunited with their fellow Israelites after an absence of seventy years. Judah was administered from Samerina, as the capital of the old northern kingdom was now known, and the returning exiles had to present their letters to the Israelite governors there when they arrived. 60 In exile, the deportees had changed their religion quite radically. How would they relate to the Yahwists who had never left Judah, who worshiped other gods beside Yahweh, and adhered to practices that now seemed barbaric and alien? The building project stalled, and twenty years after the return of the Golah, Yahweh still had no temple.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Far from seeking the welfare of the Babylonians, however, some of the exiles wanted to smash their children’s heads against a rock.11 Exile is not simply a change of address. It is also a spiritual dislocation. Cut off from the roots of their culture and identity, refugees often feel that they have been cast adrift, have lost their orientation, that they are withering away and becoming insubstantial.12 The Judean exiles were reasonably well treated in Babylon. They were not kept in a prison or a camp. King Jehoiachin, who had freely surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar in 597, was under house arrest, but was given a stipend and lived in comfort with his entourage in the southern citadel of Babylon.13 Some of the deportees lived in the capital, while others were housed in undeveloped areas, near newly dug canals.14 They could, to an extent, manage their own affairs.15 But they were still displaced persons. In Jerusalem, many had been men of authority and influence; in Babylonia they had no political rights and were on the margins of society, their position lower than that of the poorest of the local people. Some were even forced into the corvée.16 They had suffered a shocking loss of status. When they described the exile, they frequently used words like “bonds” (maserah) and “fetters” (ziggin).17 They may not technically have been slaves, but they felt as though they were. Some of the refugees could no longer worship Yahweh, who had been so soundly worsted by Marduk, god of Babylon.18 The book of Job, based on an ancient folktale, may have been written during the exile. One day, Yahweh made an interesting wager in the divine assembly with Satan, who was not yet a figure of towering evil but simply one of the “sons of God,” the legal “adversary” of the council.19 Satan pointed out that Job, Yahweh’s favorite human being, had never been truly tested but was good only because Yahweh had protected him and allowed him to prosper. If he lost all his possessions, he would soon curse Yahweh to his face. “Very well,” Yahweh replied, “all that he has is in your power.”20 Satan promptly destroyed Job’s oxen, sheep, camels, servants, and children, and Job was struck down by a series of foul diseases. He did indeed turn against God, and Satan won his bet.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  knew to keep my bearings was to talk back. The first half of 1943 brought crying spells, loneliness and the gradual realization of my faults and short- comings, which were numerous and seemed even more so. I filled the day with chatter, tried to draw Pim closer to me and failed. This left me on my own to face the difficult task of improving myself so I wouldn’t have to hear their reproaches, because they made me so despondent. The second half of the year was slightly better. I became a teenager, and was treated more like a grown-up. I began to think about things and to write stories, finally coming to the conclusion that the others no longer had anything to do with me. They had no right to swing me back and forth like a pendulum on a clock. I wanted to change myself in my own way. I realized I could manage without my mother, completely and totally, and that hurt. But what affected me even more was the realization that I was never going to be able to confide in Father. I didn’t trust anyone but myself. After New Year’s the second big change occurred: my dream, through which I discovered my longing for . . . a boy; not for a girlfriend, but for a boyfriend. I also discovered an inner happiness underneath my superficial and cheerful exterior. From time to time I was quiet. Now I live only for Peter, since what happens to me in the future depends largely on him! I lie in bed at night, after ending my prayers with the words “Ich Janke air fur all das Cute una Liebe una Schone,”* [*Thank you, God, for all that is good and dear and beautiful.] and I’m filled with joy. I think of going into hiding, my health and my whole being as das Cute; Peter’s love (which is still so new and fragile and which neither of us dares to say aloud), the future, happiness and love as das Liebe; the world, nature and the tremendous beauty of everything, all that splendor, as das Schone. At such moments I don’t think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: “Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you’re not part of it.” My advice is: “Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy.” I don’t think Mother’s advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Even if I have kept some of the reflexes of a practising Catholic to this day (secretly making the sign of the cross if I’m afraid something is going to happen, feeling watched as soon as I know I have done something wrong or made a mistake …), I can no longer really pretend that I believe in God. It’s quite possible that I lost this belief when I started having sexual relationships. Finding myself vacant, then, with no other mission to fulfil, I grew into a rather passive woman, having no goal other than those that other people set for me. I am more than dependable in my pursuit of these aims; if life went on for ever, I would pursue them for all eternity, given that I did not define them myself. It is in this spirit that I have never wavered in the job I was given (a long time ago now) publishing Art Press. I was involved in its creation, and I have dedicated myself to the work sufficiently to have been to some extent identified with it, but I feel more like a driver who must stick to the rails than a guide who knows where the port is. I’ve fucked in the same way. As I was completely available, I sought no more ideals in love than I did in my professional life, I was seen as someone who had no taboos, someone exceptionally uninhibited, and I had no reason not to fill this role. My memories of orgies, of evenings spent at the Bois or with one of my lover-friends are interlinked like the rooms in a Japanese palace. You think you are in a closed room, until one of the partitions slides back, revealing a succession of other rooms, and if you step forward more partitions open and close, and if the rooms themselves are numerous, the ways of passing from one to the other are infinite. But trips to swingers’ clubs hold little place in these memories. Chez Aimé was a different story: it was the very cradle of fucking. And I have remembered the disappointment of Les Glycines because it was the exemplary realisation of a dream I had carried with me since adolescence. Perhaps it is because my memory is chiefly visual and I remember more, for example, of Cleopatra – a club opened by some former customers of Chez Aimé – its extravagant setting in the middle of a shopping centre in the 13th arrondissement – than its neat decor and the activities to which I abandoned myself there; when all is said and done quite banal. On the other hand, other places and other events are so vivid that I could almost file them by theme.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  TINYpulse also has a feature called Cheers for Peers that lets people send out little praise-gasms for their coworkers. You praise me, I praise you, and we all get happy by reminding each other how awesome we are. Our super cheery cheerleaders are wearing this feature out with overuse, sending cheers for everything. Spinner, the former volleyball team captain, has a special place in her heart for Ashley, the youngest member of the blog team. “Ashley for president!” is one of her favorite lines. When Ashley fills in for Jan and runs the blog for a few days, Spinner praises Ashley for being “calm and collective.” Sadly, I have not received any cheers from peers. The women on the blog team have pretty much stopped speaking to me. They also won’t acknowledge that my little sub-blog has been generating a lot of traffic. In terms of page views, the five biggest posts over the past ninety days have been from me. One of my articles generated 190,000 views in a single day. In the entire seven-year history of the company only two posts have ever generated more page views than that, and it took months for them to hit the number that my post hit in twenty-four hours. On the other hand, my stuff still isn’t converting well. I’m getting lots of traffic, but my readers aren’t clicking on the e-book offers or filling out forms. Nonetheless, Cranium notices the spike in traffic, and one week, at our marketing department meeting, he awards me the Golden Unicorn, a prize for being that week’s outstanding marketer. This is an actual tiny statue of a unicorn, in gold. I put it on my desk and take pictures of it. Maybe this is good! Maybe I’m learning how to do this marketing stuff after all. I’m still working in the boiler room, away from the other bloggers. From Marcia and Jan I hear not a peep. There are no little “You go girl!!!” emails being passed around the department for me. The women who run our email campaigns and social media feeds won’t promote my articles to their subscribers. Michael, the copyeditor who just got hired to work on the marketing blog, is not allowed to work on my posts; Marcia and Jan say they can’t spare him. Things are going to change, Trotsky assures me. He tells me that one of the biggest reasons he took the job was because he wanted to work with me. I don’t believe this for a second, but all those years of working in PR have taught Trotsky how to deal with journalists: A little bit of flattery goes a long way. “They’re wasting your talent,” he says. “You should be doing more than just banging out blog posts. I have some ideas for you. I think you should be doing much higher-profile stuff.”

• From Cultish (2021)

  When the cockroach scuttled up into the full sink, Tasha opened the plug so it wouldn’t have the honor of drowning in her proximity. “I freaked out and ran out of the bathroom,” she recounted. “That was probably the pinnacle of my insanity.” By contrast, our CrossFitter Alyssa Clarke told me that the scariest possible outcome for her might be getting called lazy on Facebook if she skipped a workout. Or, if she decided to quit the box and start Spinning instead (heaven forbid), her old pals and paramours might slowly dissolve from her life. It is to qualify this wide gamut of cultlike communities that we’ve come up with colloquial modifiers like “cult-followed,” “culty,” and (indeed) “cultish.” iii. It’s really no coincidence that “cults” are having such a proverbial moment. The twenty-first century has produced a climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long-established institutions, like church, government, Big Pharma, and big business. It’s the perfect societal recipe for making new and unconventional groups—everything from Reddit incels to woo-woo wellness influencers—who promise to provide answers that the conventional ones couldn’t supply seem freshly appealing. Add the development of social media and declining marriage rates, and culture-wide feelings of isolation are at an all- time high. Civic engagement is at a record-breaking low. In 2019, Forbes labeled loneliness an “epidemic.” Human beings are really bad at loneliness. We’re not built for it. People have been attracted to tribes of like-minded others ever since the time of ancient humans, who communed in close-knit groups for survival. But beyond the evolutionary advantage, community also makes us feel a mysterious thing called happiness. Neuroscientists have found that our brains release feel-good chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin when we partake in transcendent bonding rituals, like group chanting and singing. Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors used to pack their village squares to engage in ritualistic dances, though there was no practical need for them. Modern citizens of countries like Denmark and Canada, whose governments prioritize community connection (through high- quality public transportation, neighborhood co-ops, etc.), self-report higher degrees of satisfaction and fulfillment. All kinds of research points to the idea that humans are social and spiritual by design. Our behavior is driven by a desire for belonging and purpose. We’re “cultish” by nature.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  I thrash awake, nearly tossing myself from the hammock, and pluck a dying termite from my lips. Termites live only one day, long enough to mate and destroy. It’s nearly sunset, and my fingers cramp around the cold black lens that I’m never without. A moth click click clicks against a porch light, hurling itself against the impostor moon. Seaweed pops and sizzles, cooked by the sun and now cooling. While I’ve slept, ’ve lost my shade. My pasty skin is now red — outlined by the white shape of the camera on my chest — my body too used to scuttling in the night, covered by vests and baggy pants, layered with pockets and pouches — to hide things in, to hide myself behind, to secrete. I’m sure the hammock ropes indent my back like a chessboard. Iam a game board. Play me. Kiara moves down the beach, real now, still in her nun’s garb. Beside her, the flaxen pony frolics in white briefs (aptly named in his case). He ignores her, running to retrieve a child’s ball and dancing in the waves. With them, an old woman. They creep toward the graveyard. The green strobe flashes as the sun sets. I will not follow. I’m tired. When I was young, I chased butterflies. Caught them in nets, spread and pinned them, displayed them in boxes. Good practice for what I do now — study, capture, still the moving subject, frame. Only to find they were all just moths, every last one of them common pests. Their identity mattered, though their outward beauty hadn’t changed. Like a candid of a has-been or of a beautiful nobody — worthless. Now here I am, burned out in the cloying heat of Moth Bay. Poetic justice. Full circle. God has a sense of humor. A rusted pickup jounces along the hard-crusted beach. Its tires pass over a dead gull fanned out in the sand, pressing feathers and bones beneath tread marks, leaving a trace of shocked shape. The creaking, squeaking truck crawls past, crunching the seaweed. Camarones! Camarones! An old man in the pickup bed squawks through a loud The Strangler Fig 97 speaker that amplifies and strangles his words. Translucent and veined shrimp dangle from strings stretched across a high bed frame. They dance with the lurching truck, synchronized like sickly chorus girls lifting their skirts, spindly legs tapping together. Their exoskeletons brush each other, click click click. Dust and flies chase their ghostly, fetal bodies, but each heaving bounce keeps them from settling, skittish. The old man gives me the once over, leering recognition in his eyes. A look that all of the townspeople seem to give me.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  In the remainder of this paper I will discuss this very fundamental present-day type of isolation, using as an example the highly informative history of a young woman known as Ellen West. I am pleased that this case was chosen as the basis of this symposium. First, Ellen West’s diaries and letters add much personal richness to the account. There are also included observations and reports by physicians, therapists, and diagnosticians, further adding to the completeness. Second, the full account of the case is available in both German (1944–1945) and English (1958). Finally, the case illustrates the way in which some of the best-known persons in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic field thought and worked as of a generation or more ago. I cannot possibly give the whole tragic history of Ellen West—which in its published form covers more than thirty closely packed pages—but I shall choose and comment on a few of the crucial events of her life. First, her youth. Up to the age of twenty I see her as being as whole, as integrated, as the average person. It is easy for clinicians to read pathology into a history, especially with the advantages of hindsight, but I do not see pathology here. Ellen is a girl who is lively, headstrong, sensitive, defiant, questioning, competitive, emotional, expressive, variable—in short, a living person. She is devoted to her father. She wants very much to be a boy—until she meets a boy she likes. She wonders what life is for. She has idealistic dreams of great achievement for herself. None of these characteristics necessarily portends a black future. On the contrary, she seems to be a richly variable and sensitive adolescent, with much promise. “Her twentieth year is full of happiness, yearning and hopes.” * She is eager to find a vital, serious, loving man. She takes pleasure in eating and drinking. But during this year there occurs a significant estrangement from herself. “She becomes engaged to a romantic foreigner, but at her father’s wish breaks the engagement.” Our facts are meager, but I suspect, from the lack of any protest on her part, that she adopts her father’s feelings as if they were her own. If we put this episode in schematic form, her realization would be something like this: “I thought my feelings meant that I was in love. I felt I was doing the positive and meaningful thing to get engaged. But my experiencing cannot be trusted. I was not in love. My engagement was not a meaningful commitment. I cannot be guided by what I experience. To do so would be to act wrongly, and to lose my father’s love.” Within a few weeks of this time she is eating too much and growing fat—the first appearance of what was to become her major symptom. It is perhaps indicative of the beginnings of her lack of trust in herself that she begins to diet

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  man who had written that anonymous message, filling out in much greater detail his feelings of isolation, of complete coldness. He felt that life had been so brutal to him that he had been forced to live a life without feeling, not only at work but also in social groups and, saddest of all, with his family. His gradual achievement of greater expressiveness in the group, of less fear of being hurt, of more willingness to share himself with others, was a very rewarding experience for all of us who participated. I was both amused and pleased when, in a letter a few weeks later asking me about another matter, he also included this paragraph: “When I returned from [our group] I felt somewhat like a young girl who had been seduced but still wound up with the feeling that it was exactly what she had been waiting for and needed! I am still not quite sure who was responsible for the seduction—you or the group, or whether it was a joint venture. I suspect it was the latter. At any rate, I want to thank you for what was a meaningful and intensely interesting experience.” I think it is not too much to say that because several of us in the group were able genuinely to hear him, he was released from his dungeon and came out, at least to some degree, into the sunnier world of warm interpersonal relationships.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  But there is more to the explanation than this. We in the West seem to have made a fetish out of complete individual self-sufficiency, of not needing help, of being completely private except in a very few selected relationships. This way of living would have been completely impossible during most of history, but modern technology makes this goal achievable. With my private room, private car, private office, private (and preferably unlisted) telephone, with food and clothing purchased in large impersonal stores, with my own stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer-dryer, I can be practically immune from intimate contact with any other person. What with massage parlors and call girls for men, “escort services” for women, and “singles bars” for both, even sexual needs can be satisfied without any personal intimacy. The utmost in privacy of personal life can be—and often is—achieved. We have reached our goal. But we pay a price. From our alienated young people come our criminals, capable of senseless violence. From our private middle years, we “progress” to a very lonely “senior citizen” status. Both the young and the old are almost completely useless in our modern society, and are made keenly aware of that uselessness. They have no place. They are private, isolated—and hopeless. It seems as though in our workshops, with participants from the ages of eighteen to seventy-five, we are, without being fully aware of it, acknowledging that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of separateness. We discover that we prize deep intimacy, that it helps us to grow, that it empowers us to act in our society. We are sad with one another, and we rejoice with one another. We are quite willing to put up with discomfort in order to be together. We enjoy nourishing one another. We find our private selves lost in the larger endeavor of forming a community, and yet, we discover that this gives us a deeper and more solid sense of self.

• From Cultish (2021)

  “If you say ‘I found a better band’ or ‘I’m not into basketball anymore,’ the other people won’t threaten you,” Hassan clarifies. “You won’t have irrational fears that you’ll go insane or be possessed by demons.”* Or, in the case of our former 3HO member, Tasha, turn into a cockroach. “To my core,” Tasha answered, when I asked if she truly believed the group’s promise that if she committed a serious offense, like sleeping with her guru or taking her life, she’d come back as the world’s most reviled insect. Tasha also believed that if you died in the presence of someone holy, you’d reincarnate higher. Once, she spotted a cockroach in a public restroom and was convinced it was a swami who’d done something awful in a past life and was trying to come back on a higher vibration. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s trying to die around me because I am an elevated teacher.’” Tasha shivered. When the cockroach scuttled up into the full sink, Tasha opened the plug so it wouldn’t have the honor of drowning in her proximity. “I freaked out and ran out of the bathroom,” she recounted. “That was probably the pinnacle of my insanity.” By contrast, our CrossFitter Alyssa Clarke told me that the scariest possible outcome for her might be getting called lazy on Facebook if she skipped a workout. Or, if she decided to quit the box and start Spinning instead (heaven forbid), her old pals and paramours might slowly dissolve from her life. It is to qualify this wide gamut of cultlike communities that we’ve come up with colloquial modifiers like “cult-followed,” “culty,” and (indeed) “cultish.” iii.It’s really no coincidence that “cults” are having such a proverbial moment. The twenty-first century has produced a climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long-established institutions, like church, government, Big Pharma, and big business. It’s the perfect societal recipe for making new and unconventional groups—everything from Reddit incels to woo-woo wellness influencers—who promise to provide answers that the conventional ones couldn’t supply seem freshly appealing. Add the development of social media and declining marriage rates, and culture-wide feelings of isolation are at an all-time high. Civic engagement is at a record-breaking low . In 2019, Forbes labeled loneliness an “epidemic .” Human beings are really bad at loneliness. We’re not built for it. People have been attracted to tribes of like-minded others ever since the time of ancient human s, who communed in close-knit groups for survival. But beyond the evolutionary advantage, community also makes us feel a mysterious thing called happiness. Neuroscientists have found that our brains release feel-good chemical s like dopamine and oxytocin when we partake in transcendent bonding rituals, like group chanting and singin g. Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors used to pack their village squares to engage in ritualistic dance s, though there was no practical need for them.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  ... I would like to give my view of the basic isolation felt by modern man. I will then indicate the way in which I see Ellen West as an illustration of the development of this loneliness to a tragic point. There are many ways of looking at loneliness, but I wish to focus on two elements of the sense of aloneness which we so often see in our clients and in others. The first is the estrangement of man from himself, from his experiencing organism. In this fundamental rift, the experiencing organism senses one meaning in experience, but the conscious self clings rigidly to another, since that is the way it has found love and acceptance from others. Thus, we have a potentially fatal division, with most behavior being regulated in terms of meanings perceived in awareness, but with other meanings sensed by the physiological organism being denied and ignored because of an inability to communicate freely within oneself. The other element in our loneliness is the lack of any relationship in which we communicate our real experiencing—and hence our real self—to another. When there is no relationship in which we are able to communicate both aspects of our divided self—our conscious façade and our deeper level of experiencing—then we feel the loneliness of not being in real touch with any other human being. Is this loneliness contemporary only? Perhaps. In earlier times, the individual also distrusted or ignored his experiencing in order to keep the regard of significant others. But the façade he adopted, the meaning he now felt he had found in his experiences, became a unified and strongly supportive set of beliefs and meanings. His whole social group tended to perceive life and experience in the same way, so that while he had unwittingly given up his deepest self, at least he had taken on a consistent, respected, approved self by which he could live. An early Puritan, for example, must have experienced much inward strain as he denied vast areas of his organismic experiencing. It is doubtful, however, if he experienced as much isolation and aloneness as our clients today. Modern man, like the members of earlier and more homogeneous groups, deserts his own experiencing to take on the way of being that will bring love. But the façade he adopts is taken over only from parents or a few others, and he is continually exposed to the knowledge that although that façade is approved by some, others see life in very different fashions. There is no security in any single façade. Hence, to a degree probably unknown before, modern man experiences his loneliness, his cut-off-ness, his isolation both from his own deeper being and from others.