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.

Page 142 of 170 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Eventually, his suffering became so acute that he fell very seriously ill. A number of physicians were summoned in turn to his bedside, but in spite of carrying out test after test on one thing after another, they were unable to diagnose his ailment, and all of them despaired of finding a cure. The boy’s father and mother were so weighed down with grief and worry that they almost collapsed under the strain. They begged him over and over again, in tones of deep affection, to tell them what was the matter, but by way of answer he would merely sigh deeply or tell them that he felt himself burning all over. One day, he was being attended by a doctor who, though very young, was also very clever. The doctor was holding him by the wrist, taking his pulse, when Jeannette, who waited hand and foot on the invalid for his mother’s sake, entered the room in which the youth was lying. When he saw her coming in, the flames of passion flared up in the young man’s breast, and although he neither spoke nor moved, his pulse began to beat more strongly. The doctor noted this at once, but concealing his surprise he remained silent, waiting to see how long his pulse would continue to beat so rapidly. As soon as Jeannette left the room, the young man’s pulse returned to normal, whereupon the doctor concluded that he was halfway towards solving the mystery of the youth’s illness. He waited for a while, and then, still holding his patient by the wrist, he sent for Jeannette, pretending that he wanted to ask her a question. She came at once, and no sooner did she enter the room than the youth’s pulse began to race all over again: and when she departed, it subsided. The doctor was therefore fully confirmed in his suspicions, and having risen to his feet, he took the youth’s parents aside, saying: ‘Your son’s health cannot be restored by any doctor, for it rests in the hands of Jeannette. As I have discovered through certain unmistakable symptoms, the young man is ardently in love with her, though as far as I can tell, she herself is unaware of the fact. But you will now know what measures to apply if you want him to recover.’ On hearing this, the nobleman and his lady were greatly relieved, for at least there was now a possibility that he could be cured. But they were very disturbed at the prospect, however remote it might seem, of being forced to accept Jeannette as their daughter-in-law. So when the doctor had left, they made their way to the invalid’s bedside.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady with whom Jeannette was living possessed an only son, who was dearly loved by both his parents, not only because he was their son but also because, being an outstandingly well-bred, talented, courageous and fine-bodied youth, he was eminently worthy of their affection. He was some six years older than Jeannette, and when he noticed how exceedingly beautiful and graceful she was becoming, he fell so deeply in love with her that he had eyes for no one else. But because he supposed her to be of low estate, he dared not ask his parents to allow him to marry her. Moreover, since he was afraid of being reproached with falling in love with a commoner, he did all he could to keep his love a secret, and thus he was afflicted with sharper pangs than any he would have suffered had he brought it into the open. Eventually, his suffering became so acute that he fell very seriously ill. A number of physicians were summoned in turn to his bedside, but in spite of carrying out test after test on one thing after another, they were unable to diagnose his ailment, and all of them despaired of finding a cure. The boy’s father and mother were so weighed down with grief and worry that they almost collapsed under the strain. They begged him over and over again, in tones of deep affection, to tell them what was the matter, but by way of answer he would merely sigh deeply or tell them that he felt himself burning all over. One day, he was being attended by a doctor who, though very young, was also very clever. The doctor was holding him by the wrist, taking his pulse, when Jeannette, who waited hand and foot on the invalid for his mother’s sake, entered the room in which the youth was lying. When he saw her coming in, the flames of passion flared up in the young man’s breast, and although he neither spoke nor moved, his pulse began to beat more strongly. The doctor noted this at once, but concealing his surprise he remained silent, waiting to see how long his pulse would continue to beat so rapidly. As soon as Jeannette left the room, the young man’s pulse returned to normal, whereupon the doctor concluded that he was halfway towards solving the mystery of the youth’s illness. He waited for a while, and then, still holding his patient by the wrist, he sent for Jeannette, pretending that he wanted to ask her a question. She came at once, and no sooner did she enter the room than the youth’s pulse began to race all over again: and when she departed, it subsided. The doctor was therefore fully confirmed in his suspicions, and having risen to his feet, he took the youth’s parents aside, saying: ‘Your son’s health cannot be restored by any doctor, for it rests in the hands of Jeannette.

• From Trash (1988)

  Eventually we did have lunch. She talked to me about how hard it was to be a woman alone in a college town, about how all the male professors treated her like a fool, and yet how hard she worked. I nodded. “You read so much,” I whispered. “I keep up,” she agreed with me. “So do I,” I smiled. She looked nervous and changed the subject but let me walk her back to her office. On her desk, there was a new edition of Malinowski’s The Sexual Life of Savages. I laid my notebook down on top of it, and took them both when I left. Malinowski was a fast read. I had that one back a day later. She was going through her date book looking for a free evening we could have dinner. But exams were coming up so soon. I smiled and nodded and backed out the door. The secretary, used to seeing me come and go, didn’t even look up. I took no other meals with professors; didn’t trust myself in their houses. But I studied their words, gestures, jokes, and quarrels to see just how they were different from me. I limited my outrage to their office shelves, working my way through their books one at a time, carefully underlining my favorite passages in dark blue ink—occasionally covering over their own faded marks. I continued to take the sociology professor’s classes but refused to stay after to talk, and when she called my name in the halls, I would just smile and keep walking. Once she sat beside me in a seminar and put her hand on the back of my neck where I was leaning back in my chair. I turned and saw she was biting her lips. I remembered her saying, “Your family is very poor, aren’t they?” I kept my face expressionless and looked forward again. That was the afternoon I made myself a pair of harem pants out of the gauze curtains from the infirmary. My parents came for graduation, Mama taking the day off from the diner, my father walking slow in his back brace. They both were bored at the lunch, uncomfortable and impatient to have the ceremony be over so we could pack my boxes in the car and leave. Mama kept pulling at the collar of my robe while waiting for the call for me to join my class.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Since there was nothing he could do about it, he tried to reconcile himself to the situation; and having inquired into where she was living, he began to walk up and down in the manner of a lovelorn youth outside her house, being convinced that she could not have forgotten him, any more than he had forgotten her. But this was not the case, for as the young man very soon perceived, to his no small sorrow, she no more remembered him than if she had never seen him before, and if she did indeed recollect anything at all, she certainly never showed it. Nevertheless the young man did everything he could to make her acknowledge him again; but feeling that he was getting nowhere, he resolved to speak to her in private, even if he were to die in the attempt. Having inquired of a person living nearby regarding the disposition of the rooms, he secretly let himself in to the house one evening whilst she and her husband were attending a wake with some neighbours of theirs, and concealed himself behind some sheets of canvas that were stretched across a corner of her bedroom. There he waited until they had returned home and retired to bed, and when he was sure that her husband was asleep, he crept over to that part of the room where he had seen Salvestra lying down, placed his hand on her bosom, and said: ‘Are you asleep already, my dearest?’ The girl, who was not asleep, was about to scream when the young man hastily added: ‘For pity’s sake, do not scream, for it is only your Girolamo.’ On hearing this, she trembled from head to toe, and said: ‘Oh, merciful heavens, do go away Girolamo. We are no longer children, and the time has passed for proclaiming our love from the house-tops. As you can see, I am married, and therefore it is no longer proper for me to care for any other man but my husband. Hence I beseech you in God’s name to get out of here. If my husband were to hear you, even supposing nothing more serious came of it, it would certainly follow that I could never live in peace with him again, whereas up to now he has loved me and we live calmly and contentedly together.’ To hear her talking like this, the young man was driven to the brink of despair. He reminded her of the times they had spent in each other’s company and of the fact that his love for her had never diminished despite their separation. He poured out a stream of entreaties and promised her the moon. But he was unable to make the slightest impression.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘I was never in those parts, madam, and hence I know neither the farm nor the tower of which you speak. But if your description is correct, there couldn’t be a better place in the whole world. When the time is ripe, therefore, I shall send you the image and the magic formula; but I do urge you to remember, once your wish has been granted and you realize how well I have served you, to keep the promise you have given me.’ The lady assured him that she would do so without fail, and having taken her leave of him she returned to her house. Delighted at the prospect of what was about to happen, the scholar fashioned an image with certain hieroglyphics upon it, and wrote down some nonsense concocted by himself to serve as a formula. These he sent in due course to the lady, bidding her to wait no longer, but to act upon his instructions on the very next night; then he secretly made his way with a servant to the house of one of his friends, which was not far away from the tower, in order to carry his plan into effect. For her part, the lady set out with her maidservant and went to the farm. As soon as night had fallen, pretending that she was about to retire, she sent the maid off to bed, and in the dead of night, she stole softly out of the house and made her way to the bank of the Arno, near the tower of which she had spoken. Then, having peered in every direction and listened carefully to make sure that no one was about, she undressed, concealed her clothes under a bush, and dipped herself seven times in the river, clutching the image in her hand; after which, still holding the image, she made her way, naked, towards the tower.

• From Trash (1988)

  It costs everyone else money.” She blows smoke out her nose. Katy has a matter-of-fact manner about her tonight, very unlike herself. It’s been three years since she OD’d, and in that time she’s grown more urgent, not less. This strange air of calmness disturbs me. If the dead lose their restlessness, do they finally go away? Something falls in the other room, wood striking wood. It’s probably Molly going to the bathroom a little drunk as usual, knocking things over. Katy slides up on one knee and clutches the edge of the waterbed frame. If she were a cat her hair would be on end. As it is, the hair above her ears seems suddenly fuller. I reach over and take the joint from her hand, moving gently, carefully soothing her with only my unspoken demand to hold her. “You going to wake me up in the night,” I tell her, “you might as well entertain me. Tell me where you got this delicacy. Its mashed pecan, right? Tastes just like that batch we got in Atlanta that time we hitchhiked up from Daytona Beach.” Still in her cat’s aspect, Katy looks back at me, her huge eyes cold and ruthless. Her expression makes me want to push into her breast, put my tongue to her throat, and hear her cruel, lovely laugh again. It would be easy, delicious and easy, and not at all the way it had been when she was alive. Alive, she was never easy. “You an’t got no taste at all. It’s Panama City home-grown.” She comes back down on the bed, not disturbing the mattress. “You always talking ’bout that mashed pecan, but first time I got you really stoned on it, you got sick. Spent the night in the bathroom being the most pitiful child. I swear.” “That was Tampa, and that killer Jamaican.” I draw another deep lungful of the sweet smoke. “In Atlanta, you got sick and threw up on the only clean shirt I had with me.” Katy gives her laugh finally, and predictably, I feel the goose bumps rise on my thighs. She settles herself so that her naked left hip is against my shoulder. Her skin is smooth, cool, and wonderful. I put my hand on her thigh, and she leans forward to sniff my cheek and rub her lips on my eyebrows.

• From Trash (1988)

  Biscuits. I dream about baking biscuits: sifting flour, baking powder, and salt together; measuring out shortening and buttermilk by eye; and rolling it all out with flour-dusted fingers. Beans. I dream about picking over beans, soaking them overnight, chopping pork fat, slicing onions, putting it all in a great iron pot to bubble for hour after hour until all the world smells of salt and heat and the sweat that used to pool on my mama’s neck. Greens. Mustard greens, collards, turnip greens, and poke—can’t find them anywhere in the shops up North. In the middle of the night I wake up desperate for the taste of greens, get up and find a twenty-four-hour deli that still has a can of spinach and half a pound of bacon. I fry the bacon, dump it in the spinach, bring the whole mess to a boil, and eat it with tears in my eyes. It doesn’t taste like anything I really wanted to have. When I find frozen collards in the Safeway, I buy five bags and store them away. Then all I have to do is persuade the butcher to let me have a pack of neck bones. Having those wrapped packages in the freezer reassures me almost as much as money in the bank. If I wake up with bad dreams there will at least be something I want to eat. Red beans and rice, chicken necks and dumplings, pot roast with vinegar and cloves stuck in the onions, salmon patties with white sauce, refried beans on warm tortillas, sweet duck with scallions and pancakes, lamb cooked with olive oil and lemon slices, pan-fried pork chops and red-eye gravy, potato pancakes with applesauce, polenta with spaghetti sauce floating on top—food is more than sustenance: it is history. I remember women by what we ate together, what they dug out of the freezer after we’d made love for hours. I’ve only had one lover who didn’t want to eat at all. We didn’t last long. The sex was good, but I couldn’t think what to do with her when the sex was finished. We drank spring water together and fought a lot. I grew an ulcer in my belly once I was out in the world on my own. I think of it as an always-angry place inside me, a tyranny that takes good food and turns it like a blade scraping at the hard place where I try to hide my temper. Some days I think it is the rightful reward for my childhood. If I had eaten right, Lee used to tell me, there would never have been any trouble. “Rickets, poor eyesight, appendicitis, warts, and bad skin,” she insisted, “they’re all caused by bad eating habits, poor diet.”

• From Trash (1988)

  She nodded impartially and whispered “Shannon Pearl” before taking off her glasses to begin cleaning them all over again. With her glasses off she half shut her eyes and hunched her shoulders. Much later, I would realize that she cleaned her glasses whenever she needed a quiet moment to regain her composure, or more often, just to put everything around her at a distance. Without glasses, the world became a soft blur, but she also behaved as if the glasses were all that made it possible for her to hear. Commotion or insults made while she was cleaning her glasses never seemed to register at all. It was a valuable trick when you were the object of as much ridicule as Shannon Pearl. Christian charity, I knew, would have had me smile at Shannon but avoid her like everyone else. It wasn’t Christian charity that made me give her my seat on the bus, trade my third-grade picture for hers, sit at her kitchen table while her mama tried another trick on her wispy hair—“Egg and cornmeal, that’ll do the trick. We gonna put curls in this hair, darling, or my name an’t Roseanne Pearl”—or follow her to the Bushy Creek Highway Store and share the blue Popsicle she bought us. Not Christian charity, my fascination with her felt more like the restlessness that made me worry the scabs on my ankles. As disgusting as it all seemed, I couldn’t put away the need to scratch my ankles, or hang around what Granny called “that strange and ugly child.” Other people had no such problem. Other than her mother and I, no one could stand Shannon. No amount of Jesus’s grace would make her even marginally acceptable, and people had been known to suddenly lose their lunch from the sight of the clammy sheen of her skin, her skull showing blue-white through the thin, colorless hair and those watery pink eyes flicking back and forth, drifting in and out of focus. “Lord! But that child is ugly.” “It’s a trial, Jesus knows, a trial for her poor parents.” “They should keep her home.” “Now, honey. That’s not like you. Remember, the Lord loves a charitable heart.” “I don’t care. The Lord didn’t intend me to get nauseous in the middle of Sunday services. That child is a shock to the digestion.” Driving from Greenville to Greer on Highway 85 past the Sears, Roebuck warehouse, the airbase, the rolling green-and-red mud hills—a trip we made almost every other day—my stepfather never failed to get us all to sing like some traveling gospel family. WHILE I WAS SLEEPING SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING, OH! SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME . . . MUST’HA BEEN THE HAND OF THE LORD . . . Full-voice, all-out, late-evening gospel music filled the car and shocked the passing traffic.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Ahh well,” she drawls, her fingers still stroking my leg. “It’s not a lie.” She drags herself over, rocking the bed this time, sliding under the sheet. She arranges her body to cup my side, her toes touch my ankle and her head turns so that her mouth is close to my ear. “Not a lie, no.” One hand caresses my stomach; the other hugs my hipbone. “Goddamn you!” I try to lie still but start shaking. “Don’t be boring,” she says. I feel her tongue licking my cheek, wet and almost as rough as a cat’s tongue. My whole body goes stiff, and my hands ball up into fists. “Why do you keep coming back? Why don’t you leave me alone? You weren’t worth the trouble when you were alive and you sure aren’t doing me any good now.” I start to fight her, trying to pull away or push her away. But she is smoke only, a cloud on my skin, and I can’t escape her. “Motherfucker . . .” I give it up to cry and turn my face into the pillow of her hair. It smells so sweet and familiar, marijuana and patchouli. Katy’s shoulders ride up and down. She arches her back and slides her body over so that her belly is on top of mine. I almost scream from the intensity of the sensation. It feels so good. It feels so awful. “You loved me.” She says it right into the hollow of my ear. “You love me still. Even after you left me, you loved me. You couldn’t stand me, and you damn sure couldn’t save me. But you couldn’t stand it without me either. So here I am. Feel me.” She drums her knuckles on my hipbone. Her teeth nip my neck. I gasp and arch up into her. “I’m part of you,” she whispers. “Right down in the core of you.” I pull myself back down and lie still, giving it up. “I know.” I push my face up. My mouth covers her, tastes her. Her tongue is bitter honey, sliding between my lips, filling my mouth, pushing my own tongue up to the roof of my mouth, expanding until I think I will choke. But I do not fight. I take her in. I want to swallow her, all of her. If she is a ghost, then why not? She could melt into my bones. We could be the same creature. My hips begin to rock. My fingers curl up and try to grip her waist. A heated sweat rises all over my body. I want to rise up like steam into her, pull up right off my own bones, and become something in the air, a scent of marijuana and patchouli, something sweet and nasty and impossibly sad. But I cannot get hold of her. My very movements seem to push her up and away, the cloud of her becoming mistlike, gossamer and fading. “No!”

• From Trash (1988)

  Driving backcountry with the Pearls meant stopping in at little country churches listening to gospel choirs. Mostly all those choirs had was a little echo of the real stuff. “Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “Organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure she was right. Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl; one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I could always tell which one Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week. “Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.” Uh huh, yeah. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why couldn’t God give me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddamn what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it. Shannon looked at me sympathetically. She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have. [image file=image_526.jpg] There was a circuit that ran from North Carolina to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. The gospel singers moved back and forth on it, a tide of gilt and fringe jackets that intersected and paralleled the country-western circuit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the difference, and as times got harder certainly Mr. Pearl stopped making distinctions, booking any act that would get him a little cash up front. More and more, I got to go off with the Pearls in their old yellow DeSoto, the trunk stuffed with boxes of religious supplies and Mrs. Pearl’s sewing machine, the backseat crowded with Shannon and me and piles of sewing. Pulling into small towns in the afternoon so Mr. Pearl could do the setup and Mrs. Pearl could repair tears and frayed edges of embroidery, Shannon and I would go off to picnic alone on cold chicken and chow-chow. Mrs. Pearl always brought tea in a mason jar, but Shannon would rub her eyes and complain of a headache until her mama gave in and bought us RC Colas. Most of the singers arrived late.

• From Trash (1988)

  Driving backcountry with the Pearls meant stopping in at little country churches listening to gospel choirs. Mostly all those choirs had was a little echo of the real stuff. “Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “Organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure she was right. Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl; one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I could always tell which one Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week. “Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.” Uh huh, yeah. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why couldn’t God give me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddamn what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it. Shannon looked at me sympathetically. She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have. [image file=image_526.jpg] There was a circuit that ran from North Carolina to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. The gospel singers moved back and forth on it, a tide of gilt and fringe jackets that intersected and paralleled the country-western circuit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the difference, and as times got harder certainly Mr. Pearl stopped making distinctions, booking any act that would get him a little cash up front. More and more, I got to go off with the Pearls in their old yellow DeSoto, the trunk stuffed with boxes of religious supplies and Mrs. Pearl’s sewing machine, the backseat crowded with Shannon and me and piles of sewing. Pulling into small towns in the afternoon so Mr. Pearl could do the setup and Mrs. Pearl could repair tears and frayed edges of embroidery, Shannon and I would go off to picnic alone on cold chicken and chow-chow. Mrs. Pearl always brought tea in a mason jar, but Shannon would rub her eyes and complain of a headache until her mama gave in and bought us RC Colas. Most of the singers arrived late.

• From Trash (1988)

  I thought she was going to slap me. I wanted her to slap me. If she slapped me, she would be the bad guy. I would be the heroine, the victim. I’d be able to stare her down and hate her forever. But she didn’t touch me. She shook her hands like she was throwing off dust, turned around and walked away. It was a good move. It was the perfect dismissive bar dyke move. I worked in the labs over the holidays, slept on a lab table, and went back to the nearly empty dorm only to shower and change my clothes. I lived on peanut butter sandwiches and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer from the cases the other lab assistants had hidden behind the furnace. The warm beer gave me gas, and I’d sit up on one of the tables and entertain the monkeys with rock and roll punctuated with burps. I sang the love songs the loudest, emphasizing the female pronouns by slapping the table. The monkeys were remarkably quiet, only getting noisy if I beat the table too long. They stared at me out of infinitely wise and patient faces. I poured them all a little beer and smeared peanut butter on their feed trays. They loved the peanut butter and chewed with great wide-smacking sounds. I knew I could trust them. They wouldn’t tell my secrets to anybody. “The problem is . . .” I told them, checking first to be sure the door was locked. “The problem is I don’t love her. I want to love her. I want to love somebody. I want to go crazy with love, eat myself up with love. Starve myself, strangle and die with love, like everybody else. Like the rest of the whole goddamned world. I want to be like the rest of the world.” I went up and put my hands flat against one of the cages. The monkey inside, old and hunched and gray, watched me with eyes that seemed to be all whites. “But I’m not,” I whispered. I was drunk, but I was telling the truth. “I’m not like anyone else in the whole wide world. And all I want of Toni is just a little piece now and then. A little controlled piece that she won’t mind giving me, that she wants to give me. You understand? I don’t want nothing too serious. I don’t want to need her too much. I don’t want to need her at all.”

• From Trash (1988)

  “With what they’ve taken off me, off Granny, and your Aunt Grace—shit, you could almost make another person.” A woman, a garbage creation, an assembly of parts. When I drink I see her rising like bats out of deep caverns, a gossamer woman—all black edges, with a chrome uterus and molded glass fingers, plastic wire rib cage and red unblinking eyes. My mama, my grandmother, my aunts, my sister, and me—every part of us that can be taken has been. “Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood,” my mama sang for me once, and laughing added, “But we don’t need as much of it as we used to, huh?” When Mama talked, I listened. I believed it was the truth she was telling me. I watched her face as much as I listened to her words. She had a way of dropping her head and covering her bad teeth with her palm. I’d say, “Don’t do that.” And she’d laugh at how serious I was. When she laughed with me, that shadow, so gray under her eyes, lightened, and I felt for a moment—powerful, important, never so important as when I could make her laugh. I wanted to grow up to do the poor-kid-done-good thing, the Elvis Presley/Ritchie Valens movie, to buy my mama her own house, put a key in her hand and say, “It’s yours—from here to there and everything in between, these walls, that door, that gate, these locks. You don’t ever have to let anyone in that you don’t want. You can lay in the sun if you want to or walk out naked in the moonlight if you take the mood. And if you want to go into town to mess around, we can go do it together.” I did not want to be my mother’s lover; I wanted more than that. I wanted to rescue her the way we had both wanted her to rescue me. Do not want what you cannot have, she told me. But I was not as good as she was. I wanted that dream. I’ve never stopped wanting it.

• From Trash (1988)

  It’s true. The diet of poor southerners is among the worst in the world, though it’s tasty, very tasty. There’s pork fat or chicken grease in every dish; white sugar in the cobblers, pralines, and fudge; and flour, fat, and salt in the gravies—lots of salt in everything. The vegetables get cooked to limp strands with no fiber left at all. Mothers give sidemeat to their toddlers as pacifiers and slip them whiskey with honey at the first sign of teething, a cold, or a fever. Most of my cousins lost their teeth in their twenties and took up drinking as easily as they put sugar in their iced tea. I try not to eat so much sugar, try not to drink, try to limit pork and salt and white flour, but the truth is I am always hungry for it—the smell and taste of the food my mama fed me. Poor white trash I am for sure. I eat shit food and am not worthy. My family starts with good teeth but loses them early. Five of my cousins bled to death before thirty-five, their stomachs finally surrendering to sugar and whiskey and fat and salt. I’ve given it up. If I cannot eat what I want, then I’ll eat what I must, but my dreams will always be flooded with salt and grease, crisp fried stuff that sweetens my mouth and feeds my soul. I would rather starve death than myself. In college it was seven cups of coffee a day after a breakfast of dry-roasted nuts and Coca-Cola. Too much gray meat and reheated potatoes led me to develop a taste for peanut butter with honey, coleslaw with raisins, and pale, sad vegetables that never disturbed anything at all. When I started throwing up before classes, my roommate fed me fat pink pills her doctor had given her. My stomach shrank to a stone in my belly. I lived on pink pills, coffee, and Dexedrine until I could go home and use hot biscuits to scoop up cold tomato soup at my mama’s table. The biscuits dripped memories as well as butter: Uncle Lucius rolling in at dawn, eating a big breakfast with us all, and stealing mama’s tools when he left: or Aunt Panama at the door with her six daughters, screaming, That bastard’s made me pregnant again just to get a son, and wanting butter beans with sliced tomatoes before she would calm down. Cold chicken in a towel meant Aunt Alma was staying over, cooking her usual six birds at a time raising eleven kids I never learned how to cook for less than fifteen. Red dye stains on the sink were a sure sign Reese was dating some new boy, baking him a Red Velvet Cake my stepfather would want for himself.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And so the whole company arose, gentlemen and ladies alike, and some of them began to wade, barefooted, in the limpid waters of the lake, whilst others went roaming off over the greensward to beguile the time amongst the tall, straight trees. Dioneo and Fiammetta sang a long duet about Palamon and Arcite.2 And so, in their several different ways, they whiled away the time to their entire delight and joy until the hour of supper, when they seated themselves at table beside the tiny lake. There they supped in gay and leisurely fashion with never a fly to trouble them, fanned by a gentle breeze that came from the surrounding hills, with the dulcet songs of a thousand birds delighting their ears. No more than half the vesperal hour had elapsed when the tables were cleared away, and at the queen’s behest, they wandered for a while through the delectable valley before slowly retracing their steps towards their lodging. Jesting and laughing not only about the things they had been saying earlier in the day, but many others also, in due course they arrived at the goodly palace a little before dark. There they dispelled the fatigue of their brief journey with the coolest of wines and the daintiest of sweetmeats, and in no time at all they were dancing caroles beside the beautiful fountain, accompanied sometimes by Tindaro on the cornemuse and sometimes by the music of other instruments. Finally, however, the queen ordered Filomena to sing a song, and she began as follows: ‘Alas, my life is desolate! For will I ne’er return Whence I departed all disconsolate? ‘Certain I know not, such is the desire That burns within my breast There to return, alas, where once I was. Oh, my true love, who sets my heart afire, My one, my only rest, Tell me what I should do, my dearest lord; I dare ask none, nor know to whom to go To beg for hope and help except thyself, My soul is wounded so. ‘I cannot well relate how great the pleasure Which so impassioned me That neither day nor night could yield me rest. My hearing, sight and touch, in strongest measure Were so increased in me That each sense lit new fires within my breast Which burn and scorch me to the very core. Save thee alone, no one can comfort me Or my faint heart restore. ‘Alas, come tell me when it is to be, When will that time return When I may come upon thee once again And kiss those eyes which have so murdered me? My love, for whom I yearn, Tell me when thou wilt come, and tell me “soon”, And somewhat ease the pains Love made me bear. Say thou wilt swiftly come, then linger here; How long I do not care. ‘If I perchance should hold thee once again, I may not be the fool That I have been before to let thee go.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Of course there was David, the grateful, the devoted. Mary could always talk to David, but since he could never answer her back the conversation was very one-sided. Then too, he was making it obvious that he, in his turn, was missing Stephen; he would hang around looking discontented when she failed to go out after frequent suggestions. For although his heart was faithful to Mary, the gentle dispenser of all salvation, yet the instinct that has dwelt in the soul of the male, perhaps ever since Adam left the Garden of Eden, the instinct that displays itself in club windows and in other such places of male segregation, would make him long for the companionable walks that had sometimes been taken apart from Mary. Above all would it make him long intensely for Stephen’s strong hands and purposeful ways; for that queer, intangible something about her that appealed to the canine manhood in him. She always allowed him to look after himself, without fussing; in a word, she seemed restful to David. Mary, slipping noiselessly out of the study, might whisper: ‘We’ll go to the Tuileries Gardens.’ But when they arrived there, what was there to do? For of course a dog must not dive after goldfish—David understood this; there were goldfish at home—he must not start splashing about in ponds that had tiresome stone rims and ridiculous fountains. He and Mary would wander along gravel paths, among people who stared at and made fun of David: ‘Quel drôle de chien, mais regardez sa queue!’ They were like that, these French; they had laughed at his mother. She had told him never so much as to say: ‘Wouf!’ For what did they matter? Still, it was disconcerting. And although he had lived in France all his life—having indeed known no other country—as he walked in the stately Tuileries Gardens, the Celt in his blood would conjure up visions: great beetling mountains with winding courses down which the torrents went roaring in winter; the earth smell, the dew smell, the smell of wild things which a dog might hunt and yet remain lawful—for of all this and more had his old mother told him. These visions it was that had led him astray, that had treacherously led him half starving to Paris; and that, sometimes, even in these placid days, would come back as he walked in the Tuileries Gardens. But now his heart must thrust them aside—a captive he was now, through love of Mary. But to Mary there would come one vision alone, that of a garden at Orotava; a garden lighted by luminous darkness, and filled with the restless rhythm of singing.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He therefore assumed the name of Anichino, and came to Bologna, where, as luck would have it, on the day following his arrival he saw the lady at a banquet, and discovered that her beauty was even greater than he had been led to believe. Hence he was swept completely off his feet, and resolved never to leave Bologna until he had won her love. Having given some thought to various possible ways of achieving this object, he discarded them one by one, and concluded that his only hope lay in finding employment with the lady’s husband, who kept a large household of servants. He therefore sold all his horses and arranged for his servants to be comfortably lodged, having ordered them to pretend not to know him; and having struck up an acquaintance with the landlord of his inn, he explained that he would like, if possible, to enter the service of some gentleman of standing, whereupon the landlord said: ‘You are exactly the kind of attendant who would appeal to a nobleman, Egano by name, who lives in this city and keeps a great many servants. He makes a point of surrounding himself with good-looking fellows like yourself. I’ll mention your name to him.’ The landlord was as good as his word, and by the time he had taken his leave of Egano, he had arranged for Anichino to enter his service, which suited Anichino down to the ground. Now that he was living under Egano’s roof, and frequently had occasion to see his lady, he began to serve his master so efficiently, and earned himself so high a place in his esteem, that Egano could do nothing without consulting him beforehand; and he placed not only his own person, but all of his affairs under Anichino’s control. Now one day Egano went out hawking, leaving Anichino at home, and Madonna Beatrice, who so far knew nothing of his love for her, albeit she had often had occasion to observe his ways and had formed a very good opinion of his character, invited him to play chess2 with her. Anichino, wishing to make her happy, played his pieces very skilfully and allowed her to beat him, which sent the lady into transports of joy. And when the lady’s attendants, who had been watching the game, had all drifted away and left them alone together, Anichino fetched an enormous sigh. The lady looked at him, and said: ‘What’s the matter, Anichino? Does it hurt you so much to be beaten?’ ‘My lady,’ Anichino replied, ‘I sighed for a much stronger reason than that.’ So the lady said: ‘Alas, if I hold any place in your affection, do tell me what it is.’ At the mention of the place she held in his affection, Anichino, who loved her above everything else in the whole world, heaved a second sigh, much deeper than the first, whereupon the lady pleaded with him once again to explain the reason.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music. Every soul has a distinct song. Even the place called Tulsa has a song that rises up from the Arkansas River around sundown. I heard the soul that was to be my mother call out in a heartbreak ballad. I saw her walking the floor after midnight. Though she was crazy in love with my father, she sensed the hard road ahead of them. I heard Cherokee stomp dancers in the distance. They were her mother’s people. They danced under the stars until the light of dawn. I saw a young Irishman cross over waters, forced by politics and poverty. He married into the Cherokee people. He is one of her ancestors. Over in the east I saw a hill above the river. There was my mother’s dream house. She had four children, two boys and two girls. Everyone had a bed and shoes. No one ever went hungry. Because music is a language that lives in the spiritual realms, we can hear it, we can notate it and create it, but we cannot hold it in our hands. Music can help raise a people up or call them to gather for war. The song my mother-to-be was singing will make my father love her, forever, but it will not keep him out of the arms of other women. I will find my way to earth by her voice. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] Though I was reluctant to be born, I was attracted by the music. I had plans. I was entrusted with carrying voices, songs, and stories to grow and release into the world, to be of assistance and inspiration. These were my responsibility. I am not special. It is this way for everyone. We enter into a family story, and then other stories based on tribal clans, on tribal towns and nations, lands, countries, planetary systems, and universes. Yet we each have our own individual soul story to tend. As I approached the doorway to Earth, I was hesitant to enter. I kept looking over my shoulder. I heard the crisp voice of the releaser of souls urge me forward. “Don’t look back!” And I remembered how Earth is a heavy teacher yet is so much loved by the creator of planetary beings. I did not want to leave mystery, yet I was ever curious and ready to take my place in the story. My mother wanted a baby to show her love for her husband, my father. My father didn’t know what he wanted. If he was going to have a child, he preferred a son, though in his everyday world in the racist Oklahoma of the fifties, it was difficult for an Indian man, especially one who had no living Indian father or grandfather to show him the way.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Why did you leave me? The god of all things reached Behind the counter, pulled up a sour dishrag and Cleaned off the mess. —We all went tumbling down. I said, over and over and over. —We all went tumbling down. My mother’s singing attracted me to her road in this world. It is her song that lit my attention as I listened in the ancestor realm. Secret longing rose up in her heart as she sang along with the radio. The music threading the atmosphere in what was known as Tulsa, Oklahoma, or “T-Town,” in 1951 was songs for falling in love, songs for falling out of love, songs to endure the purgatory of longing, or improvisational swing jazz, country, or songs just for the sake of kicking it. Tulsa was a Creek Indian town established on the Arkansas River, after my father’s people were forcibly removed from their homes in the South in the mid- 1800s. When they arrived in these new lands, they brought sacred fire. They brought what they could carry. Some African people came with them as family members, others as slaves. Other African people arrived independently, established their own towns. European and American settlers soon took over the lands that were established for settlement of eastern tribes in what became known as Indian Territory. The Christian god gave them authority. Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music. Every soul has a distinct song. Even the place called Tulsa has a song that rises up from the Arkansas River around sundown. I heard the soul that was to be my mother call out in a heartbreak ballad. I saw her walking the floor after midnight. Though she was crazy in love with my father, she sensed the hard road ahead of them. I heard Cherokee stomp dancers in the distance. They were her mother’s people. They danced under the stars until the light of dawn. I saw a young Irishman cross over waters, forced by politics and poverty. He married into the Cherokee people. He is one of her ancestors. Over in the east I saw a hill above the river. There was my mother’s dream house. She had four children, two boys and two girls. Everyone had a bed and shoes. No one ever went hungry. Because music is a language that lives in the spiritual realms, we can hear it, we can notate it and create it, but we cannot hold it in our hands. Music can help raise a people up or call them to gather for war. The song my mother-to-be was singing will make my father love her, forever, but it will not keep him out of the arms of other women. I will find my way to earth by her voice.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In the kingdom of France, there once lived a nobleman who was called Isnard, Count of Roussillon, and who, being something of an invalid, always kept a doctor, named Master Gerard of Narbonne, at his beck and call. The Count had only one child, a little boy of exceedingly handsome and pleasing appearance called Bertrand, who was brought up with other children of his own age, among them the daughter of the doctor I have mentioned, whose name was Gilette. Gilette was head over heels in love with this Bertrand, being more passionately attached to him than was strictly proper in a girl of so tender an age, so that when, on the death of the Count, Bertrand was committed to the guardianship of the King and had to go away to Paris, she was driven to the brink of despair. Shortly afterwards, her own father died, and if she could have found a plausible excuse, she would gladly have gone to Paris in order to visit Bertrand. But she could see no way of doing it without causing a scandal, for she had inherited the whole of her father’s fortune, and was kept under constant surveillance. Even after reaching marriageable age, she still could not forget Bertrand, and without offering any explanation she rejected numerous suitors whom her kinsfolk had urged her to marry. Now, because she had heard that Bertrand had become an exceedingly handsome young man, the flames of her love were raging more fiercely than ever when she happened to hear that the King of France had been suffering from a chest-tumour, which, because it had been treated maladroitly, had left him with a fistula that was causing him endless trouble and discomfort. Numerous doctors had been consulted, but he had not yet succeeded in finding a single one who was able to cure him. On the contrary, they had merely made matters worse, with the result that the King had abandoned all hope of recovery, and was refusing to accept further advice or treatment from anyone. The girl was filled with joy to hear these tidings, for she realized that not only did they give her a legitimate reason for going to Paris, but, if the illness of the King was what she thought it was, she would have little difficulty in obtaining Bertrand’s hand in marriage. Using the knowledge she had acquired in the past from her father, she proceeded to make up a powder from certain herbs that were good for the ailment she had diagnosed, then she rode off to Paris. Before doing anything else, she contrived to see Bertrand, after which she obtained an audience of the King and asked his permission to examine his malady. Not knowing how to refuse a young woman of such evident charm and beauty, the King allowed her to do so, and she knew at once that she could make him recover.