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

  This is not exactly what I had in mind: they’re all walking in pairs and they mostly have white hair. I grimace at what an amateur I am, at the quaint notion that I would drive myself into town and find a single man to sweep me off my feet. Unless that man is 70-something and looking for a threesome, I’ve clearly come to the wrong place. But I’ve already put myself together and I’m really looking forward to that cocktail with which I lured myself here, plus I can’t exactly go home now that I’m dolled up and smell like I’m hoping to be devoured, so I park my car and reluctantly walk in on my own. I feel equal parts brave and foolish: less “I am woman, hear me roar,” and more “I am lonely, newly single, timid woman, hear me whisper.” With empty stools on either side of me, I sit down and order a Margarita in a voice the bartender has to lean in close to hear and nurse that drink for all its worth. I can do this , I think, just one drink, some people watching and I’m out . I listen to the young, pig-tailed bartender tell her older, white-bearded counterpart about her visit home to introduce her boyfriend to her parents. I eavesdrop on two women at the end of the bar who are discussing strategies for organic gardening, stopping only when I realize I am nodding along with their suggestions. I watch the tables in front of the bar fill up and wonder if my parents might turn up; they don’t live far and this looks like their crowd. I remember how ill at ease I felt in bars even when I was in college and was supposed to thrive in them, finding them loud and pointless, preferring to snuggle up with my friends in our own apartment where we could talk without yelling and sip our peach wine coolers in a room that didn’t smell like rank beer. A boisterous group files into the bar and fills the seats to my left. My radar goes up. A man whose back is turned to me is tall, muscular and has a full head of dark hair. I casually lean forward to check his ring finger and raise my eyebrows when I see that it is bare. The group seems to be his family, so I assume a girlfriend will soon appear and I can then relax my lifted eyebrows and go back to feeling sorry for myself. I impatiently wait a few more minutes, closely monitoring the group dynamics. When a girlfriend does not appear, I slide my stool back noisily, hop off it and make a big show of moving it away from him to try and grab his attention. It works. “Oh, hey, sorry,” he says, turning his warm brown eyes to me. “I didn’t mean to crowd you.’” “No, no,” I say, smiling.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But instead he abruptly licked Mary’s cheek—it tasted peculiar, he thought, like sea water. ‘Do you want a walk, David?’ she asked him gently. And as well as he could, David nodded his head by wagging his tail which was shaped like a sickle. Then he capered, thumping the ground with his paws; after which he barked twice in an effort to amuse her, for such things had seemed funny to her in the past, although now she appeared not to notice his capers. However, she had put on her hat and coat; so, still barking, he followed her through the courtyard. They wandered along the Quai Voltaire, Mary pausing to look at the misty river. ‘Shall I dive in and bring you a rat?’ inquired David by lunging wildly backwards and forwards. She shook her head. ‘Do stop, David; be good!’ Then she sighed again and stared at the river; so David stared too, but he stared at Mary. Quite suddenly Paris had lost its charm for her. After all, what was it? Just a big, foreign city—a city that belonged to a stranger people who cared nothing for Stephen and nothing for Mary. They were exiles. She turned the word over in her mind—exiles; it sounded unwanted, lonely. But why had Stephen become an exile? Why had she exiled herself from Morton? Strange that she, Mary, had never asked her—had never wanted to until this moment. She walked on not caring very much where she went. It grew dusk, and the dusk brought with it great longing—the longing to see, to hear, to touch—almost a physical pain it was, this longing to feel the nearness of Stephen. But Stephen had left her to go to Morton . . . Morton, that was surely Stephen’s real home, and in that real home there was no place for Mary. She was not resentful. She did not condemn either the world, or herself, or Stephen. Hers was no mind to wrestle with problems, to demand either justice or explanation; she only knew that her heart felt bruised so that all manner of little things hurt her. It hurt her to think of Stephen surrounded by objects that she had never seen—tables, chairs, pictures, all old friends of Stephen’s, all dear and familiar, yet strangers to Mary. It hurt her to think of the unknown bedroom in which Stephen had slept since the days of her childhood; of the unknown schoolroom where Stephen had worked; of the stables, the lakes and the gardens of Morton.

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

  Nicolas Eymericus, also one of his cardinals, was a firm advocate of Benedict’s divine claims. The difficulties were increased by the wavering course of Charles VI., 1380–1412, a man of feeble mind, and twice afflicted with insanity, whose brothers and uncles divided the rule of the kingdom amongst themselves. French councils attempted to decide upon a course for the nation to pursue, and a third council, meeting in Paris, 1398, and consisting of 11 archbishops and 60 bishops, all theretofore supporters of the Avignon pope, decided upon the so-called subtraction of obedience from Benedict. In spite of these discouragements, Benedict continued loyal to himself. He was forsaken by his cardinals and besieged by French troops in his palace and wounded. The spectacle of his isolation touched the heart and conscience of the French people, and the decree ordering the subtraction of obedience was annulled by the national parliament of 1403, which professed allegiance anew, and received from him full absolution. When Gregory XII. was elected in 1406, the controversy over the schism was at white heat. England, Castile, and the German king, Wenzil, had agreed to unite with France in bringing it to an end. Pushed by the universal clamor, by the agitation of the University of Paris, and especially by the feeling which prevailed in France, Gregory and Benedict saw that the situation was in danger of being controlled by other hands than their own, and agreed to meet at Savona on the Gulf of Genoa to discuss their differences. In October, 1407, Benedict, attended by a military guard, went as far as Porto Venere and Savona. Gregory got as far as Lucca, when he declined to go farther, on the plea that Savona was in territory controlled by the French and on other pretexts. Nieheim represents the Roman pontiff as dissimulating during the whole course of the proceedings and as completely under the influence of his nephews and other favorites, who imposed upon the weakness of the old man, and by his doting generosity were enabled to live in luxury. At Lucca they spent their time in dancing and merry-making. This writer goes on to say that Gregory put every obstacle in the way of union.271 He is represented by another writer as having spent more in bonbons than his predecessors did for their wardrobes and tables, and as being only a shadow with bones and skin.272 Benedict’s support was much weakened by the death of the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, who had been his constant supporter. France threatened neutrality, and Benedict, fearing seizure by the French commander at Genoa, beat a retreat to Perpignan, a fortress at the foot of the Pyrenees, six miles from the Mediterranean. In May of the same year France again decreed "subtraction," and a national French assembly in 1408 approved the calling of a council. The last stages of the contest were approaching.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Or maybe not how much time I’d spent with him, but how much time I spent alone but knowing, at least, that he was there. It was different now, being totally alone, with no one person in the back of my mind—that little figure, like a cushion. I’d never had many friends in Phoenix to begin with. There was Rochelle, a professor of anthropology, who had introduced me to Jamie. Rochelle had been married since before I met her. Mid-forties with wiry, pubic-looking hair that she kept cut very short, in a style I secretly called “the Brillo,” she wore no makeup and was deeply okay with herself. I thought it was nice that there was a man on Earth who was happy to fuck her—not only to fuck her but to marry her. I wondered if this was where she got her confidence or if it was her confidence that had drawn her husband to her. When Rochelle first introduced me to Jamie, I was barely thirty, and had the luxury of time, a cool air about my future, zero apparent desperation. She probably thought I was normal. Through the years we would meet every six months or so at the same Colombian restaurant and make the same jokes about how her husband and Jamie both snored, the way they both acted like babies when they got a cold. There was an affected comfort in these casual insults, as if to say, I know this man is mine. He isn’t going anywhere. I could take him or leave him. I pretended to her that I didn’t want to marry Jamie, didn’t want to move in together, and had more than enough time with him. I was a woman contented with what she had and did not need more of anyone or anything. But now I became clingy with Rochelle, besieged her with a barrage of compulsive questioning about Jamie’s whereabouts. The questions were coupled with a series of neurotic affirmations on my part that he would be coming back, it was only a matter of when. Simply being around her in those first weeks made me feel connected to Jamie, though she wouldn’t tell me much. She looked at me like I was a woman who had caught a terrible disease that she never thought either of us would catch. She toyed with her dangling beaded earring and said she hadn’t seen him in a while, didn’t want to get in the middle. Then I saw a picture of them on Facebook, sitting next to each other at a birthday party. They each had glasses of wine and little dishes of flan, so fucking civilized. They were clinking glasses.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  38.I walked Dominic and then kept him shut up in the pantry the rest of the night. In him I saw a symbol of everything standing in the way of Theo and me being together freely. It wasn’t a problem with the sea but a problem with the land. I went to Abbot Kinney to try to distract myself. If I could be light about this, like the way I felt shopping for those other dates, maybe I could fool myself into thinking there would be life on the other side. But as I stood in the sun, each of the boutiques looked like fake storefronts—empty, like a film set. At one of the cheaper boutiques, I decided I was going to steal something: an adjustable ring with a blue stone in it. I brought it into the dressing room with me and stuck it in my bra, then walked out. It made me feel high for a minute, an adrenaline rush, but then the doom set in again. I felt sick and sad. Under a pair of palm trees on the street corner I threw up on a grate. I couldn’t believe how physical or immediate my loneliness was. I needed help, some kind of comfort, to get through until I could see him again, a place to vent. I needed someone warm who might not judge me. I called Claire and left her a long message on her voicemail. “Hi, it’s me. I’m over my head with the swimmer and fucked up. I think I might be dying. Have you ever felt like you are dying from your experiences with these guys? I mean, I know you have. But what about, really dying? Like, in a totally physical way? I think I’m actually sick, Claire. I puked in front of a bunch of Euro tourists on Abbot Kinney. I hate people and their normal lives. Anyway, can you call me back? Please? I’m sorry if I have been horrible.” I threw up again in front of a boutique called Safe Sox that sold expensive patterned socks: argyle, stripes, superheroes, marijuana leaves. I didn’t give a fuck if anyone saw, what anyone thought. Fuck them and their stupid socks. Why were people personalizing their feet with something no one else would ever see? Didn’t they know their socks were futile?! Could you get any more Sisyphean than a pair of socks emblazoned with sushi rolls? I wandered in and out of stores, like a ghost. I looked at all the people and they seemed inconsequential: deluded and interchangeable. Anything I used to worry about meant nothing now.

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

  I’d love to see you again if you’re interested, if not c’est la vie, no explanations or excuses required.” #5 comes back from the kitchen, proudly holding up a Red Delicious apple he seems surprised to have discovered in his fridge. He motions to my phone, asking if everything is OK. I feel uncomfortable being here; he is closely watching my every move and I’m well aware this is the last time I will see him. I shouldn’t have come and it feels like play-acting with him now. “Yes, all fine,” I say. “I just need a cutting board.” When he goes back to the kitchen, I text Alan, “Yes that’s quite true about the quick arrival of the taxi. I would love to see you again.” “I don’t have a cutting board,” #5 says, back again. “You must,” I say. “What do you cut on?” “I don’t know, I guess I don’t cook anything that requires cutting,” he says. The one or two times I had opened his refrigerator, I had seen stacks of styrofoam containers, leftovers he had taken from Monday night dinners at the firehouse. This strikes me as unbearably sad and lonely, his inability to stock his fridge, to make his kitchen feel like a home. Or maybe I spend too much time with my many cutting boards and need to tone it down a bit. He takes the apple and slices it for me on a plate. I obediently sit at the table and eat the thick slices, and he sits next to me and helps himself to a few. We don’t speak, just gaze at each other and chew, and when we are finished, we rise to leave. The health club is in a massive building on a commercial tract, and we sign in at the front desk. #5 has a free guest pass which requires me to fill out forms, sign waivers and release my email address so that I will receive emails in perpetuity from which I cannot successfully unsubscribe and so am forever left with this memento of my day here. We decide we will work out first and I head to an elliptical machine while he heads for the weight corner. Every ten minutes he comes to check on me as if I might escape when he’s not looking, and finally I suggest that I go to the weight corner with him. When we finish there, we head to the locker rooms to change for the jacuzzis.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He was the first pope to exploit the resources of modern mass-communications, and his figure and voice became familiar to hundreds of millions. Though he disliked private contacts, he enjoyed public appearances. He held many more public and semi-public audiences than any of his predecessors. He could deliver addresses in at least nine languages. He made it his business to receive Catholic representatives from virtually every profession and occupation. He read technical manuals avidly so that he was conversant with some of the details of each calling, and could display this vicarious expertise in the speeches he made. As the Catholic Church claimed to have the moral answers to all problems, and as he was its animating force, he thought it right to deliver his verdicts on as many aspects of human existence as possible. Thus he received, and addressed, men and women in the fields of medicine, law, dentistry, architecture, chemistry, printing, journalism, heating engineering, public health, acting, diesel engines, aeronautics, celestial navigation, radio engineering, and so forth. His encyclicals and published letters and speeches covered a vast range of subjects, usually in considerable technical detail. One of his last encyclicals, Miranda prorsus (1957), dealt with the movies, radio and TV, and laid down, for instance, the moral duties of a news announcer; the way in which regional censorship offices should be set up and operated; the moral responsibilities of cinema managers, distributors and actors; the duty of bishops to rebuke erring Catholic movie directors and producers, and if necessary to impose appropriate sanctions on them; the obligation of Catholic members of festival juries to vote for ‘morally praiseworthy’ movies, and even the moral criteria by which posters advertising movies were to be determined. In such ways Pius came into dogmatic contact, as it were, with an unnumbered host of Catholics throughout the world. Yet the confrontation was impersonal. Carried high on his Sedia Gestatoria – a form of monarchical transport inherited from imperial Rome – amid the cheering crowds, he remained a solitary figure, Montalembert’s ‘little idol in the Vatican’. Pius, wrote Guiseppe Dalla Torre, former editor of L’Osservatore Romano, ‘separated himself from direct contact with life, though not, unfortunately, from people who abused his confidence’. The keynote of his pontificate was isolation. The isolation was not merely personal. It was credal and political. Pius was a Tridentine pope. To him, the Greek Orthodox were simply schismatics, and the Protestants heretics. There was nothing more to be said or discussed. He was not interested in the ecumenical movement. The Catholic Church already was ecumenical in itself. It could not change, because it was right and always had been right. Indeed, fundamental change in the Catholic Church was to be avoided at all costs. Motion was dangerous: experience showed it invariably led in the direction of evil. Catholicism must stay exactly where it was: it was for the heretics and schismatics to submit as, in God’s good time, they surely would.

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

  A glass of rosé in her hand, I am approached by the hostess, a lovely Australian woman named Kate. Next to her stands a man who she says is here from Sweden for the summer. She introduces us and quietly slips away. Aha, so this explains the last-minute invitation. The Swedish man is friendly, but when he shows me pictures of his babies and girlfriend back home, I am quietly stung. I realize that Kate is not trying to set me up with this man, just round out her dinner table. I don’t want to be a seat filler. These are new friends who don’t understand what an alien feeling it is for me to be on my own, and how horrifying it is to find myself the only single woman in a room filled almost entirely with couples. Just six months earlier I was one of them – safely ensconced in a pair, eyeing my husband to signal no more drinks since he would inevitably be the one driving home. Kate and her husband are gracious and I know their invitation was purely kind, but I feel out of place nonetheless and hyper aware of my new status. I’ve always had such a solid sense of my role in my family and in social settings, but I’m not sure where I belong anymore. * The next day is as hot and humid as the weather reports had predicted, so I don the skimpiest outfit I can find: very short chambray shorts and a flimsy black tank top. I realize I have my elementary school yearbooks in the house and scan the books on the shelves until I find them, then I pull out all seven and dump them in a tote bag as a surprise to show #3. If all else fails at least we can spend some time going down memory lane together. When I pull up to his house half an hour later, I feel like I’ve just entered Dr. Dolittle’s yard. Ducks are waddling down the driveway, cats are purring on the back porch and the chocolate Lab is barking from inside the door. Now that I can fully see the house in daylight, its many charms are fully exposed, and what’s more charming about an old farmhouse than a little decay? Paint is peeling, weeds are flourishing, creaky uneven wooden floorboards lead to the back door and I am thoroughly captivated by every detail. I shout hello and he yells for me to come in, the rickety screen door banging shut behind me. I find him busily puttering around his rustic kitchen, surrounded by piles of greens and fruit, bread and olives, a tall vase of wildflowers holding command at the center.

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

  Clearly, I don’t know how this is done, but I do now know that dragging your stool away from the man you’re trying to get to pay attention to you is not effective in the long run. His back is turned again and now I’m not only alone but adrift at sea, gaping spaces to my right and left. I did not know it was possible to feel both conspicuous and invisible at the same time and I squeeze my eyes shut as if that could make me disappear altogether. Sip, breathe, sip, breathe, I instruct myself. “That’s an interesting bag,” a deep voice says, interrupting my one-woman pity party. “Sorry, what?” I ask, startled and looking around to see if this handsome stranger is speaking to me or someone near me. “Your bag. What’s it made of?” he asks, nodding his head towards my clutch purse resting on the bar. “Cork,” I say, testing out my voice, and I hand it to him to touch. “Very fancy.” “Not exactly,” I say. “It’s from one of the outlet stores over in Lee. But thanks,” I foolishly say and cringe, thinking about how I am always quick to deflect a compliment – learn how to just say thank you, I think to myself. “I passed those stores earlier today on my bike,” he says. “That’s a hilly bike ride.” “No, not a bicycle, I mean my motorcycle. I’m on a quick getaway trip, just checking out this area. I’m Jack,” he says, sticking out his hand toward me. “And this is Don,” he says of the short, balding man next to him. They continue talking, but include me in their conversation. I’m the only one from around here, so I give them tips for local restaurants and scenic highways. Jack gestures to my nearly empty glass and asks what I’m drinking. I tell him a Margarita and he asks if I’ve ever had a Cadillac. When I say no, he calls over the bartender and orders one for himself and one for me, asking the bartender to put it on his tab. The bartender’s eyes flicker over to me and he gives me a small smile and nod, as if relieved that I seem to have made a friend. I suppress a laugh. A man is buying me a drink? The last time I went on a date I was still using a fake ID, not even of legal drinking age yet. Don tells us that he traveled here from hours away to hear the singer tonight, then he drifts off to his wife and friends, leaving Jack and me alone. Jack emphasizes that he is on his own on this weekend trip; his daughter spends most of her time with her boyfriend, leaving him lonely, as his wife died many years earlier and he just ended a relationship with a girlfriend.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  5As the spring waxed more lusty and strode into summer, Stephen grew conscious that Collins was changing. The change was almost intangible at first, but the instinct of children is not mocked. Came a day when Collins turned on her quite sharply, nor did she explain it by a reference to her knee. ‘Don’t be always under my feet now, Miss Stephen. Don’t follow me about and don’t be always staring. I ’ates being watched—you run up to the nursery, the basement’s no place for young ladies.’ After which such rebuffs were of frequent occurrence, if Stephen went anywhere near her. Miserable enigma! Stephen’s mind groped about it like a little blind mole that is always in darkness. She was utterly confounded, while her love grew the stronger for so much hard pruning, and she tried to woo Collins by offerings of bull’s-eyes and chocolate drops, which the maid took because she liked them. Nor was Collins so blameworthy as she appeared, for she, in her turn, was the puppet of emotion. The new footman was tall and exceedingly handsome. He had looked upon Collins with eyes of approval. He had said: ‘Stop that damned kid hanging around you; if you don’t she’ll go blabbing about us.’ And now Stephen knew very deep desolation because there was no one in whom to confide. She shrank from telling even her father—he might not understand, he might smile, he might tease her—if he teased her, however gently, she knew that she could not keep back her tears. Even Nelson had suddenly become quite remote. What was the good of trying to be Nelson? What was the good of dressing up any more—what was the good of pretending? She turned from her food, growing pasty and languid; until, thoroughly alarmed, Anna sent for the doctor. He arrived, and prescribed a dose of Gregory powder, finding nothing much wrong with the patient. Stephen tossed off the foul brew without a murmur—it was almost as though she liked it!

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then a queer little girl dressed up as young Nelson: ‘I’d like to be awfully hurt for you, Collins, the way that Jesus was hurt for sinners. . . .’ The potting shed smelling of earth and dampness, sagging a little on one side, lop-sided—Collins lying in the arms of the footman, Collins being kissed by him, wantonly, crudely—a broken flower pot in the hand of a child—rage, deep rage—a great anguish of spirit—blood on a face that was pale with amazement, very bright red blood that kept trickling and trickling—flight, wild, inarticulate flight, away and away, anyhow, anywhere—the pain of torn skin, the rip of torn stockings— She had not remembered these things for years, she had thought that all this had been quite forgotten; there was nothing to remind her of Collins these days but a fat, half-blind and pampered old pony. Strange how these memories came back this morning; she had lain in bed lately trying to recapture the childish emotions aroused in her by Collins and had failed, yet this morning they came back quite clearly. But the garden was full of a new memory now; it was full of the sorrowful memory of Martin. She turned abruptly, and leaving the shed walked towards the lakes that gleamed faintly in the distance. Down by the lakes there was a sense of great stillness which the songs of the birds could in no way lessen, for this place had that curious stillness of spirit that seems to interpenetrate sound. A swan paddled about in front of his island, on guard, for his mate had a nest full of cygnets; from time to time he glanced crossly at Stephen though he knew her quite well, but now there were cygnets. He was proud in his splendid, incredible whiteness, and paternity made him feel overbearing, so that he refused to feed from Stephen’s hand although she found a biscuit in her pocket. ‘Coup, c-o-u-p!’ she called, but he swung his neck sideways as he swam—it was like a disdainful negation. ‘Perhaps he thinks I’m a freak,’ she mused grimly, feeling more lonely because of the swan. The lakes were guarded by massive old beech trees, and the beech trees stood ankle-deep in their foliage; a lovely and luminous carpet of leaves they had spread on the homely brown earth of Morton. Each spring came new little shuttles of greenness that in time added warp and woof to the carpet, so that year by year it grew softer and deeper, and year by year it glowed more resplendent. Stephen had loved this spot from her childhood, and now she instinctively went to it for comfort, but its beauty only added to her melancholy, for beauty can wound like a two-edged sword. She could not respond to its stillness of spirit, since she could not lull her own spirit to stillness.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now she was passing the old potting shed where Collins had lain in the arms of the footman. Choking back her tears she paused by the shed, and tried to remember the girl’s appearance. Grey eyes—no, blue, and a round-about figure—plump hands, with soft skin always puckered from soap-suds—a housemaid’s knee that had pained very badly: ‘See that dent? That’s the water. . . . It fair makes me sick.’ Then a queer little girl dressed up as young Nelson: ‘I’d like to be awfully hurt for you, Collins, the way that Jesus was hurt for sinners. . . .’ The potting shed smelling of earth and dampness, sagging a little on one side, lop-sided—Collins lying in the arms of the footman, Collins being kissed by him, wantonly, crudely—a broken flower pot in the hand of a child—rage, deep rage—a great anguish of spirit—blood on a face that was pale with amazement, very bright red blood that kept trickling and trickling—flight, wild, inarticulate flight, away and away, anyhow, anywhere—the pain of torn skin, the rip of torn stockings— She had not remembered these things for years, she had thought that all this had been quite forgotten; there was nothing to remind her of Collins these days but a fat, half-blind and pampered old pony. Strange how these memories came back this morning; she had lain in bed lately trying to recapture the childish emotions aroused in her by Collins and had failed, yet this morning they came back quite clearly. But the garden was full of a new memory now; it was full of the sorrowful memory of Martin. She turned abruptly, and leaving the shed walked towards the lakes that gleamed faintly in the distance. Down by the lakes there was a sense of great stillness which the songs of the birds could in no way lessen, for this place had that curious stillness of spirit that seems to interpenetrate sound. A swan paddled about in front of his island, on guard, for his mate had a nest full of cygnets; from time to time he glanced crossly at Stephen though he knew her quite well, but now there were cygnets. He was proud in his splendid, incredible whiteness, and paternity made him feel overbearing, so that he refused to feed from Stephen’s hand although she found a biscuit in her pocket. ‘Coup, c-o-u-p!’ she called, but he swung his neck sideways as he swam—it was like a disdainful negation. ‘Perhaps he thinks I’m a freak,’ she mused grimly, feeling more lonely because of the swan.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Puddle had looked at Stephen gravely. ‘You’re not working, and yet work’s your only weapon. Make the world respect you, as you can do through your work; it’s the surest harbour of refuge for your friend, the only harbour—remember that—and it’s up to you to provide it, Stephen. ’ Stephen had been too sore at heart to reply; but throughout the long journey from Morton to Paris, Puddle’s words had kept hammering in her brain: ‘You’re not working, and yet work’s your only weapon.’ So while Mary lay sleeping in Stephen’s arms on that first blessèd night of their reunion, her lover lay wide-eyed with sleeplessness, planning the work she must do on the morrow, cursing her own indolence and folly, her illusion of safety where none existed. 2 They soon settled down to their more prosaic days very much as quite ordinary people will do. Each of them now had her separate tasks—Stephen her writing, and Mary the household, the paying of bills, the filing of receipts, the answering of unimportant letters. But for her there were long hours of idleness, since Pauline and Pierre were almost too perfect—they would smile and manage the house their own way, which it must be admitted was better than Mary’s. As for the letters, there were not very many; and as for the bills, there was plenty of money—being spared the struggle to make two ends meet, she was also deprived of the innocent pleasure of scheming to provide little happy surprises, little extra comforts for the person she loved, which in youth can add a real zest to existence. Then Stephen had found her typing too slow, so was sending the work to a woman in Passy; obsessed by a longing to finish her book, she would tolerate neither let nor hindrance. And because of their curious isolation, there were times when Mary would feel very lonely. For whom did she know? She had no friends in Paris except the kind Mademoiselle Duphot and Julie. Once a week, it is true, she could go and see Buisson, for Stephen continued to keep up her fencing; and occasionally Brockett would come strolling in, but his interest was centred entirely in Stephen; if she should be working, as was often the case, he would not waste very much time over Mary. Stephen often called her into the study, comforted by the girl’s loving presence. ‘Come and sit with me, sweetheart, I like you in here.’ But quite soon she would seem to forget all about her. ‘What . . . what?’ she would mutter, frowning a little. ‘Don’t speak to me just for a minute, Mary. Go and have your luncheon, there’s a good child; I’ll come when I’ve finished this bit—you go on!’ But Mary’s meal might be eaten alone; for meals had become an annoyance to Stephen.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, abandoned and forlorn, disguised herself as best she could, and when it was dark she went to a nearby cottage, where she obtained some things from an old woman and altered the doublet, shortening it to make it fit. She also converted her shift into a pair of knee-length breeches, cut her hair, and having transformed her appearance completely so that she now looked like a sailor, she made her way down to the coast, where she happened to encounter the master of a ship lying some distance offshore, a Catalan gentleman called Señor En Cararch, who had come ashore at Albenga 3 to take on supplies of fresh water. Engaging him in conversation, she persuaded him to sign her on as his cabin-boy, calling herself Sicurano da Finale, and once they had gone aboard, the gentleman supplied her with some smarter clothes to wear. And she served him so well and so efficiently that he grew very attached to her. Now it so happened that not long afterwards, the Catalan docked in Alexandria with a cargo which included some peregrine falcons that he was taking to the Sultan. These he duly delivered, after which he was occasionally invited to dine at the royal table, and the Sultan, on observing the ways of Sicurano, who was still in attendance upon him, was greatly impressed with the youth and asked the Catalan if he would allow him to keep him. Although he was loath to let him go, the Catalan gave his consent, and it was not very long before Sicurano’s able performance of his duties had earned him the same degree of favour and affection from the Sultan that he had enjoyed with his previous master. Now, at a certain season of the year, it was the custom to hold a trade-fair within the Sultan’s domain at Acre, where merchants, both Christian and Saracen, used to congregate in large numbers. And in order to protect the merchants and their merchandise, the Sultan always used to send, in addition to his other officials, one of his court dignitaries with a contingent of guardsmen. And so it was that when the time for the fair drew near, the Sultan thought that he would send Sicurano to discharge this function, as he already had an excellent knowledge of the language; and this he did. Sicurano duly arrived in Acre, therefore, as captain in charge of the special guard whose duties were to protect the merchants and their merchandise. And

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  “On business, and I’m very busy when I’m there.” I saw the nervous movement she’d used to describe Sabina, covering her mouth with her hand as if holding back something. Then she lowered her hand and stood up, erect, poised. “I’m sorry, I’m going to be late for a meeting with Gore.” That was what she had said when she’d shooed me out the door the last time. I had no choice but to follow her to the elevator. “Shall I call you to see if you have spoken with Jean-Jacques?” “If there’s time.” Her enthusiasm for putting us together had vanished. I could hear the supplication in my voice when I said, “I’m going to read your novels again with your donnée.” “That’s fine.” Her lips curved in a smile, but its power of eternal reassurance was gone. She pressed the elevator button and instead of the hug for which I yearned, she air-kissed me on both cheeks. I stepped inside and watched her rush away before the elevator doors shut. The cage plunged to street level and jolted with a kick. CHAPTER 4 Los Angeles, California, 1964 I NEVER HEARD FROM JEAN-JACQUES or Anaïs. Although I wrote to her from LA, she sent back only a violet card announcing the French publication of her novel Ladders to Fire. Her world was now as inaccessible to me as Camelot. I dutifully embraced college life at USC, supplementing my scholarship with a waitressing job and joining a sorority that pledged me for my grades. I dated frat boys, drank beer from kegs at street parties, and had my hair frosted blond. In high school, I had pursued stage acting; in college, I gave up the theater to disappear behind the role of uncomplicated coed. Despite scoring the pill from student health, I was still a virgin at twenty, thanks to the ineptitude of the business majors, ROTC plebs, and frat boys at USC—and my own fears, which had returned as if the night with Jean-Jacques had never happened. However, the summer before my junior year, I wrangled a scholarship to study at Cambridge, England for a month, and given the affordability of Europe then at five dollars a day, I extended my stay to a three-month European tour, on which I was determined to find, as Anaïs had recommended, a European man to deflower me. When I saw the desk clerk who checked me in at the student hostel in Rome, I recalled Michelangelo’s David, which I’d stared at in Florence. If that was what a naked Italian man looked like, I’d thought, I was in the right country. To my everlasting good fortune, that’s what Gerardo Palmieri looked like. An hour after he had assigned me a tiny room in the hostel, Gerardo knocked on its door. Would I like to have dinner with him when he got off work?

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  It will include detailed information that can be used by parents, teachers, and therapists. “Curse the mind that mounts the clouds in search of mythical kings and only mystical things, mystical things cry for the soul that will not face the body as an equal place and I never learned to touch for real down, down, down where the iguanas feel.” “Iguana Song” by Dory Previn Epilogue Three Brains, One Mind In our exploration of trauma we have learned about the primordial energies that reside within the reptilian core of our brains. We are not reptiles, but without clear access to our reptilian and mammalian heritage, we are not able to be fully human. The fullness of our humanity lies in the ability to integrate the functions of our triune brain. We see that to resolve trauma we must learn to move fluidly between instinct, emotion, and rational thought. When these three sources are in harmony, communicating sensation, feeling, and cognition, our organisms operate as they were designed to. In learning to identify and contact bodily sensations we begin to fathom our instinctual reptilian roots. In themselves, instincts are merely reactions. However, when these reactions are integrated and expanded by our mammalian feeling brain and our human cognitive abilities in an organized fashion, we experience the fullness of our evolutionary heritage. It is important to understand that the more primitive portions of our brains are not exclusively survival-oriented (just as our modern brain is not exclusively cognitive). They carry vital information about who we are. The instincts not only tell us when to fight, run, or freeze, they tell us that we belong here. The sense that “I am I” is instinctual. Our mammalian brains broaden that sense to “We are we ” that we belong here together. Our human brains add a sense of reflection and connection beyond the material world. Without a clear connection to our instincts and feelings, we cannot feel our connection and sense of belonging to this earth, to a family, or anything else. Herein lie the roots of trauma. Disconnection from our felt sense of belonging leaves our emotions floundering in a vacuum of loneliness. It leaves our rational minds to create fantasies based on disconnection rather than connection. These fantasies compel us to compete, make war, distrust one another, and undermine our natural respect for life. If we do not sense our connection with all things, then it is easier to destroy or ignore these things. Human beings are naturally cooperative and loving. We enjoy working together. However, without fully integrated brains, we cannot know this about ourselves. In the process of healing trauma we integrate our triune brains.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  During this lonely time, my new closeness with Renate sustained me. We talked for hours on the phone every night. Renate’s mind was a garden of strange knowledge; there wasn’t an esoteric subject about which she was not informed: Joan of Arc, contraception in the Middle Ages, the culture of the Chumash Indians in Malibu, Jung’s book on flying saucers, the Vedantist concept of pain as illusion. Listening to Renate speak was like reading a book by a great writer. It saddened me that her true talent of discourse was just thrown to the wind, given away; never to receive recompense, recognition, or appreciation except by Anaïs, who’d taken sentences from Renate’s lips and placed them in her fiction. For my part, I would have been happy simply to listen to Renate’s stories all night, especially about Anaïs. But Renate challenged me to keep up with her, making me volley sentences, testing my memory, and heightening my game like a tennis pro with a fledgling. Always our nightly conversations began and ended with our shared business of moving Anaïs’s movie project forward. [image file=image_rsrc3R3.jpg] The Old World was an eatery frequented by aspiring actors and directors. Alan Rosen was waiting for us at a street-side patio table where we almost had to shout to be heard over the traffic. After we ordered salads, he said, “I talked with my investors, and we think the safest thing would be for us to tie up all the novels.” Renate kicked my leg under the table but kept her voice professional. “That would be quite expensive, to tie up all of Anaïs’s work.” “You have to help me here.” Alan smiled. “I was thinking $50,000 up front. I’m going to need a five-year option for that price.” I could not believe my ears. $50,000! Renate nodded, not agreeing or disagreeing. “What about the back end?” I asked. I’d been talking to friends, and this was something they always asked about. I wasn’t sure what it was. Alan said, “Look, I know you two want to be producers but I’m not going to promise you anything I can’t deliver. Would you consider taking associate producer if I paid you Writer’s Guild minimum to write the screenplay?” We hadn’t actually thought we could be producers, real or associate, nor screenwriters, but we both kept silent. Finally, I said, “You’ll have to talk to our agent.” We didn’t have an agent, and Renate gave me a surprised look, but she went along with my bluff. Alan said, “I’ll have to get all this OK’d by my people, too.” Alan told us to get started on a film treatment for Spy and have our agent call him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  5As the spring waxed more lusty and strode into summer, Stephen grew conscious that Collins was changing. The change was almost intangible at first, but the instinct of children is not mocked. Came a day when Collins turned on her quite sharply, nor did she explain it by a reference to her knee. ‘Don’t be always under my feet now, Miss Stephen. Don’t follow me about and don’t be always staring. I ’ates being watched—you run up to the nursery, the basement’s no place for young ladies.’ After which such rebuffs were of frequent occurrence, if Stephen went anywhere near her. Miserable enigma! Stephen’s mind groped about it like a little blind mole that is always in darkness. She was utterly confounded, while her love grew the stronger for so much hard pruning, and she tried to woo Collins by offerings of bull’s-eyes and chocolate drops, which the maid took because she liked them. Nor was Collins so blameworthy as she appeared, for she, in her turn, was the puppet of emotion. The new footman was tall and exceedingly handsome. He had looked upon Collins with eyes of approval. He had said: ‘Stop that damned kid hanging around you; if you don’t she’ll go blabbing about us.’ And now Stephen knew very deep desolation because there was no one in whom to confide. She shrank from telling even her father—he might not understand, he might smile, he might tease her—if he teased her, however gently, she knew that she could not keep back her tears. Even Nelson had suddenly become quite remote. What was the good of trying to be Nelson? What was the good of dressing up any more—what was the good of pretending? She turned from her food, growing pasty and languid; until, thoroughly alarmed, Anna sent for the doctor. He arrived, and prescribed a dose of Gregory powder, finding nothing much wrong with the patient. Stephen tossed off the foul brew without a murmur—it was almost as though she liked it!

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Quite suddenly Paris had lost its charm for her. After all, what was it? Just a big, foreign city—a city that belonged to a stranger people who cared nothing for Stephen and nothing for Mary. They were exiles. She turned the word over in her mind—exiles; it sounded unwanted, lonely. But why had Stephen become an exile? Why had she exiled herself from Morton? Strange that she, Mary, had never asked her—had never wanted to until this moment. She walked on not caring very much where she went. It grew dusk, and the dusk brought with it great longing—the longing to see, to hear, to touch—almost a physical pain it was, this longing to feel the nearness of Stephen. But Stephen had left her to go to Morton . . . Morton, that was surely Stephen’s real home, and in that real home there was no place for Mary. She was not resentful. She did not condemn either the world, or herself, or Stephen. Hers was no mind to wrestle with problems, to demand either justice or explanation; she only knew that her heart felt bruised so that all manner of little things hurt her. It hurt her to think of Stephen surrounded by objects that she had never seen—tables, chairs, pictures, all old friends of Stephen’s, all dear and familiar, yet strangers to Mary. It hurt her to think of the unknown bedroom in which Stephen had slept since the days of her childhood; of the unknown schoolroom where Stephen had worked; of the stables, the lakes and the gardens of Morton. It hurt her to think of the two unknown women who must now be awaiting Stephen’s arrival—Puddle, whom Stephen loved and respected; Lady Anna, of whom she spoke very seldom, and who, Mary felt, could never have loved her. And it came upon Mary with a little shock that a long span of Stephen’s life was hidden; years and years of that life had come and gone before they two had finally found each other. How could she hope to link up with a past that belonged to a home which she might not enter? Then, being a woman, she suddenly ached for the quiet, pleasant things that a home will stand for—security, peace, respect and honour, the kindness of parents, the good-will of neighbours; happiness that can be shared with friends, love that is proud to proclaim its existence. All that Stephen most craved for the creature she loved, that creature must now quite suddenly ache for.

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

  Feeling her loneliness and estrangement from the great Father, she wishes to unite herself immediately, without regard to the intervening links, with him who is the originating principle of the universe, and alone has the power of self-generation. She jumps, as it were by a single bound, into the depth of the eternal Father, and brings forth of herself alone an abortion (e[ktrwma),a formless and inchoate substance, 872 of which Moses speaks when he says: "The earth was without form and void." By this sinful passion she introduces confusion and disturbance into the Pleroma.873 She wanders about outside of it, and suffers with fear, anxiety, and despair on account of her abortion. This is the fall; an act both free and necessary. But Sophia yearns after redemption; the aeons sympathize with her sufferings and aspirations; the eternal Father himself commands the projection of the last pair of aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, "for the restoration of Form, the destruction of the abortion, and for the consolation and cessation of the groans of Sophia." They comfort and cheer the Sophia, and separate the abortion from the Pleroma. At last, the thirty aeons together project in honor of the Father the aeon Soter or Jesus, "the great High Priest," "the Joint Fruit of the Pleroma," and "send him forth beyond the Pleroma as a Spouse for Sophia, who was outside, and as a rectifier of those sufferings which she underwent in searching after Christ." After many sufferings, Sophia is purged of all passions and brought back as the bride of Jesus, together with all pneumatic natures, into the ideal world. The demiurge, the fiery and jealous God of the Jews, as "the friend of the bridegroom,"874 with the psychical Christians on the border of the Pleroma, remotely shares the joy of the festival, while matter sinks back into nothing. In Valentine’s Christology, we must distinguish properly three redeeming beings: (1) The a[nw Cristov" or heavenly Christ, who, after the fall of Sophia, emanates from the aeon monogenhv", and stands in conjunction with the female principle, the pneu'ma a{gion. He makes the first announcement to the aeons of the plan of redemption, whereupon they strike up anthems of praise and thanksgiving in responsive choirs. (2) The swthvr or jIhsou'", produced by all the aeons together, the star of the Pleroma. He forms with the redeemed Sophia the last and highest syzygy. (3) The kavtw Cristov", the psychical or Jewish Messiah, who is sent by the Demiurge, passes through the body of Mary as water through a pipe, and is at last crucified by the Jews, but, as he has merely an apparent body, does not really suffer. With him Soter, the proper redeemer, united himself in the baptism in the Jordan, to announce his divine gnosis on earth for a year, and lead the pneumatic persons to perfection. Notes. Dr.