Longing

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 Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  One day it Started to rain, and several women who were making a pleasure party were caught in the shower. They all ran for shelter beneath the eaves of Hayemon's house, and chattered together: 'If we knew who lived here, we could get ourselves invited to tea and rest till the evening; and perhaps they would lend us umbrellas. They might even invite us to an agreeable supper. It is a great pity that we are not their friends.'One of them, who was older, bolder and less scrupulous than the rest, dared to open the door a little and cast a glance into the house. Then Hayemon in fury seized a bamboo cane and drove the woman away, crying: 'Get out of here, you vile female! You witch, you very poisoner, begone! 'When the terrified woman had run away, he purified the place with salt and clean sand. It is an ancient Japanese custom to spread salt and sand to purify a place which has been polluted. Without doubt there was never in all the great town of Yedo a fiercer enemy of women. [image file=image_rsrc1KM.jpg] 8 A Samurai becomes a Beggar through his Love for a PageAYOUNG SAMURAI NAMED GUZAYEMON Toyawa lived in a house by himself in his master's palace near Toranomon. One day, being at liberty, he went out for a walk, as he was tired of his bachelor solitude. When young he had been famous for his manly beauty, and had lived in the town of Matsuyama in the Province of South Shikoku; but he had at length left his former master and come to Yedo. There he was soon engaged by another Lord at the same salary which he had received at Matsuyama. His house was in the Shibuya district. Mid-spring had come, and the weather was delightful. He went to visit the shrine of the god Tudo at Meguro. Passing by a little water-fall in the temple garden, he saw a beautiful young man. This youth was wearing a large hat decorated with silk and kept in place by a pale blue ribbon: his wide-sleeved robe was as purple as the glory of morning flowers: he carried at his girdle two swords in wonderfully-ornamented scabbards: he was walking at ease carrying a branch of yellow flowers in his hand. His beauty was such that Guzayemon for a moment asked himself if the god Roya had not taken human form, or if a peony had not come to life and was walking in the spring sunlight. He was fascinated by the young man, who was already accompanied by two shaven courtiers and several servants, and followed him.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Or perhaps it was not for the sake of control over the terror of nature at all that they created their gods. Perhaps it was because the world, with all its beauty, was not enough. Simply being alive was not enough. The Greeks needed a new fantasy to make the world more exciting. With their war, wine, poetry, gods, and food, they needed to get high. Maybe we all did. Yes, it certainly seemed like the human instinct, to get high on someone else, an external entity who could make life more exciting and relieve you of your own self, your own life, even for just a moment. Maybe once that person became too real, too familiar, they could no longer get you high—no longer be a drug—and that was why you grew tired of them. That was what had happened to me and Jamie. It was only when he was pushing me away—and then after he was gone—that he became a drug. It was so much easier for someone to be the drug before or after the relationship. When they were absent they were exciting. When they were right there it was a different story. But some human beings did want simple partnership: someone with whom to weather life, like Annika and Steve. How did they stay so into each other living side by side, everything out in the open? How did they simultaneously have each other and still want each other? To want what you had—now, that was an art, a gift maybe. But whenever I felt I finally “had” Jamie, the nights in his bed seemed suffocating. I preferred the acquiring, the almost-getting, the moment before he was mine again. What was left to look forward to after you got a person? To “have” seemed nauseating. Then again, I was the sick one—the one in group therapy—not Annika. The women in group told themselves they were looking for symbiotic companionship, something like Annika and Steve. They thought they wanted a man to show up for them. But I didn’t believe them. They were choosing men who couldn’t be present, so it probably wasn’t really what they wanted. It certainly wasn’t what Claire or Diana wanted. It wasn’t what I wanted.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Love is very deep, Their reflection is very deep. I had to wet my sleeves To gather them, And I want to go on Wetting, wetting, wetting my sleeves. 84. First Snow. This first snow Is very white Like first love. My maid asks from the doorstep: 'Where shall I throw The tea-leaves?' 85. Bed. Under the unnecessarily large Mosquito curtain My little heart Is fiercer than a nightlight. 86. Then. The flowers come to blossom, then We look at the flowers, then They wither, then

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Sappho’s gaps are not intentional negative space, and I do not propose we read them as such. The words are gone and they are never coming back, I typed. We can try to fill the gaps with biographical knowledge, but this will not replicate the music. Guessing at gaps cannot simulate music. Nor can the silence of the gaps simulate the missing music either. But the silence comes closer. Had Claire somehow helped me find a new direction, a new legitimacy to my thesis? At least I was admitting that my own idea had been bullshit—that you couldn’t read something as intentional if it had never been intentional, even through a perverted academic lens. Yet one crux of my thesis remained: there should be no attempt made to fill in the gaps with biography or bullshit narrative. So what to do with them then—the discomfort of not knowing? How to savor what was there without guessing at what wasn’t? I was drunk but the question seemed good. The writing seemed good. Around midnight, somehow, I found myself back out again on the rocks. It was chilly and I didn’t bring a sweater. I looked around, and then, feeling embarrassed, I stopped. It was obvious Theo wasn’t there, but I kept imagining that he was—or that he was deeper in the waves, farther out, watching me looking for him, laughing. I pretended to myself that I had come out to the rocks simply because I had wanted to be near the ocean. But I was disappointed. I turned to go home. “Lucy,” said a voice. It was Theo. Had he been hiding behind a rock? This kid was confusing. When I felt him watching me from far away, maybe was he watching me from much closer? He sort of bobbed a few feet away. “You’re back,” I said cheerfully, but casual. I did not ask where he had been. “I’m back,” he said. “How have the dates been treating you?” “Disgusting,” I said. “Ah, too bad.” “Each its own little death.” “Funny,” he said. “You’re like a little death.” “What?” I asked. “You are. You’re…gloomy yet charming. I like it.” “Well, no one has said that before.” “You’re gently death-ish. You know about death, you’re aware of it, and most people aren’t anymore. But you’re not a killer. You’re a soft darkness.” A soft darkness. “Yeah, I’m aware of death,” I said. I was thinking about the doughnut incident. “In high school I wore black lipstick and black nail polish.” “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s not manufactured. You have it in you.” “What about you? What’s your story?” I asked. “Oh God, I hate my story,” said Theo. “I bet you have a great story.” “What do you want to know, exactly?” he asked. He was treading water a little faster now. I caught a glint of his wet suit under the waves. “Where do you live?” I asked. “Around here,” he said.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  9 An Actor loved his Patron, even as a Flint Seller T HERE WAS ONCE A CELEBRATED FEMALE character-actor named Sennojyo. He had made his first appearance on the Stage at the age of fourteen, and at forty-two years of age was Still so popular that people loved to see him portray feminine characters. His greatest success was in the drama called While going toward Kawashi to an assignation , which was performed for three years at Yedo. But one autumn an epidemic disease of the spinal marrow broke out in Yedo, and to this Sennojyo fell a victim. His back grew bent and deformed, and he altogether lost his grace of body. But he was gifted with high talent and intelligence, and did not lose his popularity because of his disease. Many employers even found it difficult to secure him for their comedies; for, when he was a little drunk, his cheeks became rosy, giving him such charm that many men fell in love with him. Several well-known priests lost their heads about him, and spent so much money to have him that they were obliged to sell the precious relics of their temples to gain an interview. Some of these were even so mad as to sell the holy trees of the sacred forests, for which they were driven from their temples and became beggars. Many clerks also spent their employers' money to see Sennojyo privately, and ruined their masters. Once, when he was Still young, Sennojyo took his diary from a little private chest. Its title was My experiences with many men, and it was a very interesting record. He Started to read it through. He had noted down in it all his impressions, from the very first day, of widely different people. Sometimes he would go to a samurai's room. By the mere caress of his hand he would soothe a demon in an angry man. He would make men of refinement or priests even out of farmers. In a word, he had treated each of his different patrons in the way most suitable to him. He shut the diary with a smile. But suddenly he thought of one of his patrons who had been most devoted to him. Sennojyo did not know where this man was. That evening a violent gale blew up, and snow began to fall. The mountains to the north of Kyoto were already white. A wretched-looking man was Standing under the Gojyo bridge. He lived on the bank of the river Kamo, and there he slept during the night. In the morning he gathered pebbles from the river Kurama and sold them in Kyoto for gun flints. Those that he had been unable to sell he threw away in the evening. His life under this bridge was very miserable. He had formerly been one of the rich men of the Province of Owari. He had been given over to male love.

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

  On the 17th of September Charles sailed from the harbor of Flushing for Spain with a fleet of fifty-six sails, his two sisters (Mary, formerly queen of Hungary, and regent of the Low Countries, and Eleanor, the widow of King Francis of France), and a hundred and fifty select persons of the imperial household. After a boisterous voyage, and a tedious land-journey, he arrived, Feb. 3, 1557, at the Convent of St. Gerome in Yuste, which he had previously selected for his retreat. The resolution to exchange the splendors of the world for monastic seclusion was not uncommon among the rulers and nobles of Spain; and the rich convents of Montserrat and Poblet (now in ruins) had special accommodations for royal and princely guests. Charles had formed it during the lifetime of the Empress Isabella, and agreed with her that they would spend the rest of their days in neighboring convents, and be buried under the same altar. In 1542 he announced his intention to Francisco de Borgia; but the current of events involved him in a new and vain attempt to restore once more the Holy Roman Empire in the fullness of its power. Now his work was done, and he longed for rest. His resolution was strengthened by the desire to atone for sins of unchastity committed after the death of his wife.324 Yuste is situated in the mountainous province of Estremadura, about eight leagues from Plasencia and fifty leagues from Valladolid (then the capital of Spain), in a well-watered valley and a salubrious climate, and was in every way well fitted for the wishes of the Emperor.325 Here he spent about eighteen months till his death,—a remarkable instance of the old adage, Sie transit gloria mundi. His Cloister Life. There is something grand and romantic, as well as sad and solemn, in the voluntary retirement of a monarch who had swayed a scepter of unlimited power over two hemispheres, and taken a leading part in the greatest events of an eventful century. There is also an idyllic charm in the combination of the innocent amusements of country life with the exercises of piety. The cloister life of Charles even more than his public life reveals his personal and religious character. It was represented by former historians as the life of a devout and philosophic recluse, dead to the world and absorbed in preparation for the awful day of judgment;326 but the authentic documents of Simancas, made known since 1844, correct and supplement this view. He lived not in the convent with the monks, but in a special house with eight rooms built for him three years before. It opened into gardens alive with aromatic plants, flowers, orange, citron, and fig trees, and protected by high walls against intruders. From the window of his bedroom he could look into the chapel, and listen to the music and prayers of the friars, when unable to attend.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I tried on bra after bra, various panties with little slips of paper in each of them to keep them fresh for whoever bought them. I imagined other women’s vaginal juices on the paper. It nauseated me a little but also made me feel like I was part of some kind of ritual, a lineage, like Sappho’s all-female cult of Aphrodite. Claire and the saleswoman were the priestesses. They made it a party. The saleswoman was named Bridget and was a GMILF, a hot grandma type. They cooed over me, telling me I had a nice ass, cute little breasts, that I looked great in everything. Claire even slapped me on the ass. I liked the way they encouraged me, babied me even. With my mother dead, and Annika away at college, I’d never had that type of tactile feminine love as a teen. I’d pretended I didn’t need or want it. I told myself that I was lucky. As a single parent, my father wasn’t home much and I was free. I had zero curfew, no rules. But my longing leaked out in other places. It was in my love for Sappho, the divine feminine. I craved that nurturing, to be swallowed up in the arms of Aphrodite herself, rocked and held. But I was afraid to ask women for it, afraid they would die on me or reject me in some other way. So I looked for it in men who could not give it. But Claire and Bridget were heaping it on me voluntarily, without me even having to ask. They brought me more and more items: black lace bra with pink satin underneath, black lace thong, bra with leopard straps and black cups, black mesh panties with brown satin insert, demi bra, push-up bra, sheer lace bra with no underwear, black crotchless panties. I continued to soak in all the attention, the ushering of my transition from woman to whore. But after forty-five minutes of the fashion show, I began to get overwhelmed and hungry. What were we doing? There was a nothingness we all thought we were staving off, using the bras and panties as little lace shields. But now the nothingness was creeping in again and only I could feel it. Bridget’s compliments became annoying. What a fake. She didn’t really want to mother me and she didn’t think I was sexy. She just wanted to sell lingerie. I asked her straight up what some of the items cost, then began to sweat. $120 for a pair of underpants? $250 for a bra? Now it was too late. I was in too deep. We had become family of a sort. I would feel ashamed not buying anything. “Don’t worry about it,” said Claire. “I’ll buy them for you. As a gift. A welcome-to-fucking gift?” I wondered where she got all of her money. She didn’t seem to work. I guess the ex-husband had given her a cut in the divorce. Maybe alimony.

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

  It is the Holy, Spirit who lifts us up to Christ on the wings of faith, and brings him down to us, and thus unites heaven and earth. A view quite similar to that of Berengar seems to have obtained about that time in the Anglo-Saxon Church, if we are to judge from the Homilies of Aelfric, which enjoyed great authority and popularity.745 § 130. Lanfranc and the Triumph of Transubstantiation. The chief opponent of Berengar was his former friend, Lanfranc, a native of Pavia (b. 1005), prior of the Convent of Bet in Normandy (1045), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury (1070–1089), and in both positions the predecessor of the more distinguished Anselm.746 He was, next to Berengar, the greatest dialectician of his age, but used dialectics only in support of church authority and tradition, and thus prepared the way for orthodox scholasticism. He assailed Berengar in a treatise of twenty-three chapters on the eucharist, written after 1063, in epistolary form, and advocated the doctrine of transubstantiation (without using the term) with its consequences.747 He describes the change as a miraculous and incomprehensible change of the substance of bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ.748 He also teaches (what Radbert had not done expressly) that even unworthy communicants (indigne sumentes) receive the same sacramental substance as believers, though with opposite effect.749 Among the less distinguished writers on the Eucharist must be mentioned Adelmann, Durandus, and Guitmund, who defended the catholic doctrine against Berengar. Guitmund (a pupil of Lanfranc, and archbishop of Aversa in Apulia) reports that the Berengarians differed, some holding only a symbolical presence, others (with Berengar) a real, but latent presence, or a sort of impanation, but all denied a change of substance. This change he regards as the main thing which nourishes piety. "What can be more salutary," he asks," than such a faith? Purely receiving into itself the pure and simple Christ alone, in the consciousness of possessing so glorious a gift, it guards with the greater vigilance against sin; it glows with a more earnest longing after all righteousness; it strives every day to escape from the world ... and to embrace in unclouded vision the fountain of life itself."750 From this time on, transubstantiation may be regarded as a dogma of the Latin church. It was defended by the orthodox schoolmen, and oecumenically sanctioned under Pope Innocent III. in 1215. With the triumph of transubstantiation is closely connected the withdrawal of the communion cup from the laity, which gradually spread in the twelfth century,751 and the adoration of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, which dates from the eleventh century, was enjoined by Honorius III. in 1217, and gave rise to the Corpus Christi festival appointed by Urban IV., in 1264. The withdrawal of the cup had its origin partly in considerations of expediency, but chiefly in the superstitious solicitude to guard against profanation by spilling the blood of Christ.

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

  The reasonableness of Christianity, and its agreement with all the true and the beautiful in the Greek philosophy and poesy. All who had lived rationally before Christ were really, though unconsciously, already Christians. Thus all that is Christian is rational, and all that is truly rational is Christian. Yet, on the other hand, of course, Christianity is supra-rational (not irrational). 7. The adaptation of Christianity to the deepest needs of human nature, which it alone can meet. Here belongs Tertullian’s appeal to the "testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae;" his profound thought, that the human soul is, in its inmost essence and instinct, predestined for Christianity, and can find rest and peace in that alone. "The soul," says he, "though confined in the prison of the body, though perverted by bad training, though weakened by lusts and passions, though given to the service of false gods, still no sooner awakes from its intoxication and its dreams, and recovers its health, than it calls upon God by the one name due to him: ’Great God! good God!’—and then looks, not to the capitol, but to heaven; for it knows the abode of the living God, from whom it proceeds."116 This deep longing of the human soul for the living God in Christ, Augustin, in whom Tertullian’s spirit returned purified and enriched, afterwards expressed in the grand sentence: "Thou, O God, hast made us for thee, and our heart is restless, till it rests in thee."117

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Here, then, is the great biblical theme that enables us to understand what the gospels are saying about God—not just any “god,” but Israel’s God, the covenant God, the creator. That YHWH will come back was the underlying theological narrative of a great deal of Second Temple literature, giving direction not only to thinkers and writers but to activists and would-be leaders, as we see in the great Temple-cleansing and Temple-rebuilding projects of the Maccabees, of Herod, of the final ill-fated would-be messiah Simon bar-Kochba. That he had not yet done so was the constant ache, the nagging sorrow both for the pious, praying the Psalms and waiting patiently, and for the pragmatists, knowing that until he came back Israel would not be free of foreign domination. The book of Exodus ends with the divine presence coming at last to dwell in the newly built tabernacle. The Hebrew scriptures as a whole end with the hope that the larger-scale story that mirrors that early, prototypical narrative will have a similar ending. The problem is that nobody knows when or how this will happen. The story the gospels are telling, once we turn down the overly loud volume of the second speaker, which has simply been shouting, “He’s divine! He’s divine!” is the story of how YHWH came back to his people at last. Looking for the Right Thing At this point we have to be careful and once more get some critical distance from the main streams of our own recent traditions. It all depends on looking for the right thing. It has been popular for well over a hundred years to see the explicitly high Christology of John as contrasted with the implicitly low Christology of the synoptics. According to this view, John thinks Jesus is divine, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke basically don’t. True, they push the boundaries here and there, but they are still telling the story of the “human” Jesus, while John is telling the story of the “divine” Jesus. This contrast is simply wrong—on both sides. John has been made the spokesman for the kind of “high Christology” with which devout Christians in recent centuries have been trying to oppose post-Enlightenment skepticism; and the skeptics have replied by declaring that John is late, nonhistorical, and therefore irrelevant. The skeptics, in turn, have made the synoptics their spokesmen; in them they see the human Jesus, admittedly already distorted, but still visible. But none of this dialogue of the deaf has paid attention to the biblical story of God as we have just briefly sketched it.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  But, in the texts that first-century Jews read, prayed, sang, and pondered, there were various visions of how God’s “theocracy,” his worldwide kingdom, would come into reality and (not least) what it might look like when it did. Some people, it seems, really did want a “theocracy” not too far removed from what we see in some parts of the world today. Simeon ben Kosiba (a.k.a. bar-Kochba), the great would-be messiah of the 130s AD, seems to have tried to establish that kind of divine rule. Others were not so sure. But because the Jews believed that (as we find in books such as Daniel and Jeremiah) God’s will for his people in exile was that they live wisely within the pagan world where they found themselves, and because they believed that God was ultimately sovereign (in ways that are normally invisible) over those nations, they were able to develop a theological account of the comings and goings of pagan nations and their rulers as well as a subversive literature and lifestyle designed to critique the pagan rulers, to encourage the faithful, and to warn of God’s ultimate judgment. (That literature included what may be called “apocalyptic,” coded and symbolic writing about the powers of the world and the powers of God, intending to “reveal” or “unveil” the hidden divine truth behind the outward realities of power and empire.) But within Israel itself there were problems too. The corrupt pseudoaristocracy of the high-priestly family, the fake monarchs of the Hasmonean and then Herodian families, and different movements of reform and revolution and various stages in between—none of this offered a real sense of completion, of God’s best will for the world coming into view at last. That sense of incompleteness, of an unfinished story, was not simply a matter of texts. It was a matter of a whole society struggling to see its way forward, clinging to the institutions of Temple and Torah and the festivals that embraced both, hoping that somehow the sovereign creator God would take his power and reign in the way he had always promised. Hoping, in fact, for a new exodus. So, to sum up this very long but necessary introduction. Judaism always assumed that the creator God wanted the world to be ordered and ruled by his image-bearing humans. The world, heaven and earth, was created as God’s temple, and his image-bearers were the key elements in that temple. But the world was out of joint through the failure of humans in general and Israel in particular, so God the creator would have to act in judgment and justice to hold them to account. And the sign of that coming judgment was that at the heart of the world God had placed his covenant people, gathered around the Temple, which was the microcosm of creation, to celebrate his true order and to pray for it to come on earth as in heaven.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  The vet hadn’t exactly said it would all be fine, but she didn’t seem particularly concerned either. I felt strangely jealous that Annika would come home to see the dog. After my mother died, I longed for my sister to take some time off from college to be with me. I verbalized this one time, a few days after the funeral, that maybe she might delay her return to school. She was sitting on my bed behind me, playing with my hair, which was something my mother used to do every night before I went to sleep. It was very quiet; the only sound I could hear was the gentle brush of her fingers against my scalp. “Please stay with me,” I said. “I need you.” But she told me she had exams, and while she wanted to stay with me, she had to go back or she wouldn’t complete the semester. I felt totally rejected, but I did not judge her. I looked up to her, and my world had already been so destroyed by the death of my mother that I couldn’t afford to be angry with her. But it hurt, nonetheless. So instead I judged myself. I made myself wrong for needing someone, for revealing that need. I needed more than the universe could give me. Clearly my feelings were too big for the universe to hold, too disgusting. I would not put them out there like that again. I didn’t even want to have to feel them myself. Well, now I was feeling again and I did not want Annika coming home. If she returned there was no way I could just wander out to the ocean alone at night. I guess I could still go to the rocks and not tell her where I was going—I could lie and say I was going across town or to a café to see some acoustic guitar bullshit. But if she saw me out the window, what would I say I was doing? She would start asking questions. Also, I had a new fantasy. I wanted to ask Theo if he would maybe come with me to the house and stay for a night. I didn’t know how I would get him there. Certainly he couldn’t drag himself across the beach. I doubted he would want me to carry him. But maybe I could get one of those little sand-wagon things, or a bicycle with a wagon on the back. I had already planned this visit, fully, in my head. I wanted to have sex with him on a bed. I didn’t even care if he slept over or not. I just wanted a place to be with him where we could relax that wasn’t freezing and where we weren’t looking around for people to catch us. The way I felt when we kissed or when he went down on me—I wanted to create that feeling and live in that for as long as I could.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  On the days when I would be seeing Theo in the evening, I worked on my book. Its whole contention had changed. I no longer wrote about the blank spaces in any theoretical way or tried to convince anyone that the only way to understand Sappho was to perceive the spaces as though they were always there. I no longer argued with past scholars about their biographical projections on the texts. I wrote, instead, about Eros in the text itself and its relationship to the spaces. The verb eratai less closely meant “to love” than it did “to desire.” Yet despite the best attempts of history, time, weather, and churchmen, the desire in Sappho’s poems had survived as though it were love eternal. Perhaps desire was not so ephemeral after all. Was a feeling the only eternal thing, despite the fact that everyone said it would pass? Could you get away with academic discourse about a feeling? I was going to try. I informed the advisory committee by email of my changes. They asked me to send an outline of the project and a sample. I bullshitted an outline and sent it over to them. At the same time, it wasn’t bullshit at all, because I was already living it. The book was me. On the in-between days, after returning Theo to the ocean, I mostly hid from feeling. I stayed deep under the covers and slept. I tried to ignore the rest of the world. I was like a hungover person, biding time until she could have more alcohol. The hair of the dog alone would fix me. I was a drunk waiting only for her next drink. I felt I loved him, yet I kept my secret from him. To contain the answer as to how this would all end—to withhold that knowledge, as well as the lie that I would continue to live here alone—felt strange. I was so close to him, it was odd that I could keep a secret that might upset him. It was as though we were one person who was able to completely compartmentalize different elements of themself in different parts of their mind, and the two parts never intersected. They were not allowed to meet. When living in the illusion of our eternality (which was perhaps not an illusion if the feeling rather than the facts were to be believed), I prevented the truth from entering. Actually, it was as though the truth didn’t even knock. But when I was alone, I would wake in a panic from my daytime naps and there it would be: my impending departure.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  The surfers began to come in, but there was no sign of Theo. I always wondered where the surfers put their keys, their wallets. Out of all the things they did—choosing a wave, standing up on their boards, staying on their boards, somehow not dying—it seemed the most interesting to me where they put their stuff. Did they have secret compartments in their wet suits? Wouldn’t their phones get ruined? Maybe they didn’t bring their phones. There were definitely a lot of girls waiting to get texted back. I waited for hours, but Theo never came. He was probably avoiding me. Or maybe he was on land, out with a bunch of other young people. I imagined them drinking beer on a roof somewhere, setting off fireworks. The group laughed in unison, the tinkling of their voices echoing in the brisk Venice air. They didn’t give a fuck about anything. He was at the center of the group, lighting the fireworks and grinning. No, he was sitting over to the side of the group, sullen and mysterious. There were girls in the group—surfer girls with long beach hair, who smelled like vanilla and coconut. They wanted him. They wanted him for his distance. In turns they each came over to him, offering a hit off a joint, or a beer. He could have any of them he wanted. He could kiss them right there, up on the roof, and then lead them by the hand inside the house. But as each girl approached him, he held up his hand, silently. What an asshole, really. Why was he so sullen? Was he thinking about someone else? I pretended he was thinking about me. It made me happy for a moment. Then I felt a flush of shame for being so stupid. I went back inside and fell asleep cradling Dominic. I had given my power away to Garrett and I didn’t like the feeling. It reminded me of the past year with Jamie, only Garrett was someone much stupider. It was like I had taken that longing for Jamie and transplanted it onto the next closest body. How had I ended up here again? When I woke up in the middle of the night I had to pee like a motherfucker. I raced to the toilet and sat down, but nothing would come out. I squeezed out a few drops and they burned. Uh oh. I crawled back into bed hoping it wasn’t what I thought it was. But then I had to pee again ten minutes later. “Jesus fuck, why?” I whimpered, curling up in a fetal position. Dominic licked my cheek. He seemed to understand that I was hurting. He whined a little. I whined back at him and we whined together.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  She had been in pain but couldn’t surrender—not until she knew it was truly over between her and the objects of her affection. It wasn’t enough for the tennis boys to ignore her texts. They would have to go further. They would have to tell her she disgusted them and it was never happening again. Even that might not be enough. In truth what she needed was to have no remaining options at all, no one left to fuck. She would have to burn through all of the tennis boys in Los Angeles, maybe in the state of California. Perhaps again in the future, the pain of not hearing from her conquests—the pain of waiting—would outweigh the potential for sparkle itself. Diana would come back to group and get strong for just a day or for a few weeks. But the moment she got a text, the moment that glitter reached out to her, she would forget what that pain had felt like. She would want only the glitter. Euphoric recall of past glitter would blind her to the suffering it had caused. Then, the group would become just an afterthought: a place for sick people to go, but not for her. She was not so bad off as the sick people. When she called me I could hear it in her voice. Who could blame her? Somehow she had gotten another taste of sparkle. Now that she had a taste or saw its potential she was going for it again. When she looked back at the group she saw sick, miserable humans, something she would want to block out having ever been a part of. But the women in the group would see her as the sick, miserable one. They thought she would either come back or face devastation. But they’d forgotten the sensation of what it was like out there, to be in the throes of madness. I didn’t tell Diana about Theo, either. I took Dominic for a quick walk. He began pulling me in the direction of Oakwood Park, but I didn’t have the energy for it. I held the leash tightly as he yanked and skipped in place, whimpering with his head pointing in that direction. I knew that I should give him what he wanted, a little piece of that effortless happiness, but I couldn’t play wolf woman today. My mind was too much elsewhere, already on the rocks, waiting, waiting for Theo to surface and transform my perception. My mind was already in the ocean. I decided I would call Claire. “How are you doing, dearest?” I asked. “I’m better,” she said. “David called. I’m seeing him tomorrow. I told him he isn’t giving me enough of what I need. I haven’t hung myself from any silk scarves. So I guess that’s progress?” “Good,” I said. “And you?” “I’ve done it again,” I said. “I’ve fallen hard. Only this time I think it’s real.” “The surfer?” asked Claire.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  It would be difficult for any woman, but there was just no way that Sappho, being Sappho, would be able to play it cool or stay detached. And so she got hooked. I had done all the drugs and now I was at the place where the addict goes to wait for her dealer. Even if she shakes and shakes, she waits. Even if he never returns, she waits. There is nothing else left. So I returned to the rocks every night and sat by the sea with a blanket around me. As the days passed I became less inflamed with pain, and more just empty. I began to feel purified as though I were a gourd and someone had spooned me out. I felt spiritual, almost holy, like I could look down at myself from the sky. There I was, a woman on the rocks by the ocean, wrapped in a blanket, waiting for the return of her lover. Everything I knew about art would say that I was a painting. I was certainly a poem. Sappho was too—her life, perhaps, unknowable, but her feelings were mine. I was mythic. And though I was convinced that I would never see him again, it was too tragic to contemplate. My body cried. But I didn’t let the nothingness eat me whole. Inside me was a small spark of hope that sent me out there every night. I would bring the wagon, just in case he appeared. I wanted to show him I would labor for him. But I also wondered if maybe it was a jinx—that if I brought the wagon he wouldn’t be there, like when you bring an umbrella and it doesn’t rain. Still, the wagon was my totem and I had to bring it. It showed my hope to the gods I didn’t even think I believed in. It was like an empty chalice waiting to be filled. Every night, I promised myself that it would be the last night I drugged Dominic. But every night I had to do it, just in case. Should Theo return, I didn’t want there to be any impediments when he came swimming up. I would take him home and we would be entwined right away. I would do anything to stay with him. I would never think of leaving him again. Sometimes I would fall asleep on the rocks. As I drifted off I would imagine that he was watching me from somewhere, seeing if I was putting in my time, testing me. Perhaps it was the gods I didn’t think I believed in who were watching me. But this is how it is with the gods and other mythic creatures. You imagine them watching you.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “You can’t tell anyone you’re going,” he said, pulling away from me. “They will think you’re crazy and lock you up.” “I know. I won’t tell them anything,” I said. “Good,” he said. “In the meantime, how about you come stay at the house with me for a little while? As I’m preparing. The dog is asleep. I’ve been making him sleep every day now just in case you were here so I could bring you home with me.” “No,” he said. “I’m finished with the land.” “Oh,” I said. “This is as far as I can go. I hope you understand why.” I didn’t want to understand, but I did. He had sacrificed for me. The thought of him dragging himself back across the beach that night, the danger he put himself in, was scary. Now he wanted me to sacrifice for him. But hadn’t I done that? What had this whole week been? “I’ll meet you here each night until Thursday,” he said. “And you can tell me whether you are still coming.” He looked different to me now, more bloated in the face and jaded. His eyes looked darker. I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that he needed me as much as I needed him. It scared me to be needed. “I’m coming,” I said. “Good.” We brought our faces together and kissed gently on the mouth. He put one of his hands at the base of my neck, under my chin, and tightened it—not enough to cut off my air supply, but just so I could feel him pressing a bit into my larynx. My throat felt full of pleasure and emotion. I opened my mouth wider on his and made an “ohhh” sound. We kissed wetly. “I wish we could live the rest of our lives on these rocks,” I said. “Why isn’t it possible to just live at the edge of both, the ocean and the land?” Of course I knew why. The edge was an uncomfortable and dangerous place for both of us. The rocks were nowhere to live. I had wanted him to come to my world for that same reason. “One day these rocks won’t be here,” he said. “The ocean will waste them away.” “Then we could find new rocks,” I said. “Eventually you have to choose,” he said. “That’s how the story has always been and that’s the way it will be forever.” “But why?” I asked. “Well,” he said, thinking, “I guess because the choice is always there.” 54.When I got back to the house, Dominic didn’t bark. This was odd, because he always smelled Theo on me. I went into the pantry to check on him. He was lying there on his side, perfectly still. “Dominic,” I said. “Domi.”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I washed my face and realized that I hadn’t eaten either, but was too tired to make anything. I thought of that song, I didn’t know the music, just the words, something like “When you’re in love you’re never hungry.” Was I in love with this swimmer boy? Or was I just completely crazy? It didn’t make sense that something could feel so good, holy, and spiritual—like the gods themselves had put it there—and still not be right. It must be right, a gift for all of my suffering. But what if Theo just wanted sex? I thought about whether he was an “unavailable” man, and it seemed unlikely. I mean, I had never spent time with him out of the water. But even if he was available, I was not available—not for long anyway. What would happen when I went back to Phoenix? I fell asleep spooning Dominic and felt the kind of love I felt the first night I’d arrived in Venice. Only this was deeper, more tinged with dependency, like a heroin vibe, and I knew it wasn’t Dominic but Theo I was feeling. 29.The next morning I awoke to find a long string of texts from Jamie. He must have been drunk and stayed up all night, because the texts were in varying stages of “I want you.” He could probably smell Theo from thousands of miles away, how absorbed I was becoming. Men could smell an opening and they could smell a closing. He said he wanted to see me when I got back to Phoenix. He asked what I thought about giving things another try. I figured you got a restraining order, I wrote. I miss you Lucy. I didn’t ask him about the scientist. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I didn’t want to burst the double bubble of dopamine I now had coursing through me, first from Theo and now from Jamie. I lay around in bed for an hour, high on the potentiality of both of them, texting languidly. Jamie’s texts seemed more urgent than they had ever been, asking me questions about my return date, if I needed anything financially, if I wanted him to come pick me up and we could drive back to the desert together. I enjoyed being coy now, the elusive one for once. The independent one. That’s ok, I wrote, really, but thank you. I will see you when I get back. Then I got another text. This one from Claire. how shall I kill myself?

• From How God Became King (2012)

  (Note the irony: Babylon, “Babel,” is the place of human pride and idolatry in contrast to which God called Abraham in the first place.) The whole of what we call the Second Temple period, roughly 538 BC onward, is characterized by this sense of divine absence; God is gone, and he hasn’t come back. That is the problem faced by the prophet Malachi; the priests are bored and slack in their liturgical duties because, though they’ve rebuilt the Temple, there’s no sense of YHWH having returned, as Ezekiel had said he would. Ah, says Malachi, but the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple—“but who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears” (3:1–2)? Are you ready, in other words, for another moment like that in 1 Kings 8 when Solomon dedicated the Temple and the glory of YHWH filled the house, or that moment in Isaiah 6 when the prophet saw YHWH high and lifted up, filling the Temple with his train and the house with smoke? Here, then, is the great biblical theme that enables us to understand what the gospels are saying about God—not just any “god,” but Israel’s God, the covenant God, the creator. That YHWH will come back was the underlying theological narrative of a great deal of Second Temple literature, giving direction not only to thinkers and writers but to activists and would-be leaders, as we see in the great Temple-cleansing and Temple-rebuilding projects of the Maccabees, of Herod, of the final ill-fated would-be messiah Simon bar-Kochba. That he had not yet done so was the constant ache, the nagging sorrow both for the pious, praying the Psalms and waiting patiently, and for the pragmatists, knowing that until he came back Israel would not be free of foreign domination. The book of Exodus ends with the divine presence coming at last to dwell in the newly built tabernacle. The Hebrew scriptures as a whole end with the hope that the larger-scale story that mirrors that early, prototypical narrative will have a similar ending. The problem is that nobody knows when or how this will happen. The story the gospels are telling, once we turn down the overly loud volume of the second speaker, which has simply been shouting, “He’s divine! He’s divine!” is the story of how YHWH came back to his people at last . Looking for the Right Thing At this point we have to be careful and once more get some critical distance from the main streams of our own recent traditions. It all depends on looking for the right thing . It has been popular for well over a hundred years to see the explicitly high Christology of John as contrasted with the implicitly low Christology of the synoptics. According to this view, John thinks Jesus is divine, but Matthew, Mark, and Luke basically don’t.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  On the way home in the car, I kept checking my phone but he didn’t message me right away like Adam did. I kept turning my ringer off and on. Did I want to be notified? Did I not want to be notified or just be surprised? What if he never texted me again? When I got home, a pile of what looked like brown soft-serve ice cream was waiting for me on the kitchen tile. Dominic had shit on the floor. 18.The following night, tired of waiting, I texted Garrett. I had fun last night I waited to hear back, carrying the phone with me from room to room. There was no response. I felt like Dominic’s pile of shit. Was he really going to ignore me? I had gotten a weird feeling after our kisses, that I had suffocated him or seemed too interested. I texted him again. Would you want to hang out again? And again: Hey, sorry if I seemed too eager or something. And again: Ok I’ll leave you alone now I went outside to the beach. I saw a girl bike by on the boardwalk. She had long hair to her ass and was wearing a tiny black skirt and a hot-pink crop top with her stomach showing. I thought to myself, You little slut. I didn’t think it in a mean way but as a celebratory thing. I wanted to be her in that moment. She seemed like such an independent slut. I bet she never waited for texts, just fucked guys like Garrett all the time, casually. Surfer boys who looked like Theo the swimmer too, probably. I bet she never got attached. I wanted to be like this girl, not dependent on anyone else to be okay. Slutty, but an island. She wasn’t pretending to be content without anyone while secretly wallowing in misery. She genuinely didn’t give a fuck. I walked over to the rocks to see if Theo was there, but he wasn’t: only the waves. It was still probably too early. I waited a few minutes and wondered if he was mad at me for talking about my dating life. Was he jealous? That couldn’t be possible. I wasn’t even sure if he liked me. Still, now I was being ignored by two men. This felt worse than only being ignored by one, like the hole in me had gotten bigger. Maybe the more men you put in it the more stretched it became. Maybe Claire had been wrong. But suddenly a text came through. It was Garrett. fuck you this Sunday? My heart jumped. It was brazen, not exactly romantic, but it was clear that he wanted me. I felt as though someone had suddenly injected me with good drugs. In an instant the world had gone from black and white to Technicolor again. I began walking back to the house, smiling. ok yeah good he wrote. have you heard of the Shalimar? YES, I wrote back.