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 18 of 170 · 20 per page

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  In their reading of the Bible, most Christians rarely progressed beyond the literal and moral senses. Only an exegete who had been properly initiated into the higher mysteries of scripture could tackle the Song of Songs, which was providentially placed after Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and represented the spiritual, allegorical sense. For those Christians who read the Bible in a purely literal way, the Song was just a love poem. But an allegorical interpretation revealed its deeper meaning: ‘The love of the Bride for the celestial Bridegroom – that is, of the perfect soul for the Word of God.’ 42 Earthly love, which seems to promise so much, nearly always disappoints; it can be fulfilled solely by its archetype, the God who is love. 43 The Song depicted the drama of this ascent to the divine. Throughout, Origen interpreted the Song on three levels. When he expounded the opening verse, ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’ he began with the literal , historical sense. This was the beginning of an epithalamium: the bride was waiting for her groom; he had sent her dowry but had not yet joined her, and she longed for his presence. Allegorically , however, the image of bride and groom referred to the relationship between Christ and the Church, as Paul had explained 44 and the verse symbolized the period before the coming of Christ. Israel had received the Law and the prophets as a dowry but was still waiting for the incarnate Logos, who would complete them. Finally, the text must be applied to the individual soul, whose ‘only desire is to be united to the Word of God’. 45 The soul was already in possession of her dowry of natural law, reason and free will, but they could not satisfy her. So she prayed the opening words of the Song, in the hope that her purified ‘pure and virginal soul may be enlightened by the illumination and the visitation of the Word of God himself’. 46 The moral sense of this verse showed that the bride was a model for all Christians, who must train themselves to yearn without ceasing to transcend their nature and achieve union with God. Exegesis must always lead to action. For Origen this meant contemplation ( theoria ). Readers must meditate on the verse until they were ‘capable of receiving the principles of truth’. 47 They would thus acquire a new orientation towards God. Origen’s commentaries often seem to lack a firm conclusion, because his readers had to take the last and final step for themselves.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  In the Zohar, the Torah was compared to a beautiful maiden, secluded in a palace, who had a secret lover. She knew that he was forever walking up and down the street outside her chamber in the hope of seeing her, so she opened a door to show him her face – just for a second – and then withdrew. Only her lover understood the significance of her fleeting appearance. This was the way Torah revealed herself to a mystic. First she gave him a sign; next she spoke with him ‘from behind the veil which she has hung before her words, so that they suit the manner of understanding in order that he may progress gradually’. 44 Very slowly, the kabbalist progressed from one level of scripture to another – through the moral reflections of darash and the riddles and allegories of remez. The veils became thinner and less opaque, until at last, as he reached the culminating insight of sod, the beloved ‘stands disclosed, face to face with him, and holds converse with him concerning all of her secret mysteries, and all the secret ways which have been hidden in her heart from immemorial time’. 45 The mystic must strip away the surface meaning of the Bible – all the stories, laws and genealogies – as a lover unveils his beloved and learns to recognize not only her body but her soul. People without understanding see only the narratives, the garment; those somewhat more penetrating see also the body. But the truly wise, those who serve the most high King and stand on Mount Sinai, pierce all the way through to the soul, to the true Torah, which is the root principle of all. 46 Anybody who simply read the Bible literally ‘as a book presenting narratives and everyday matters’, had missed the point. There was nothing special about the literal Torah: anybody could write a better book – even the gentiles had produced greater works. 47 Kabbalists combined their mystical meditations on scripture with vigils, fasts and constant self-examination. They had to live together in fellowship, repressing selfishness and egotism because anger entered into the psyche like an evil spirit and shattered the divine harmony of his soul. It was impossible to experience the unity of the sefiroth in such a divided state. 48 The love of friends was fundamental to the ekstasis of Kabbalah.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Hasidim were evolving their own lectio divina, making a quiet place for scripture in their hearts. Instead of analysing a text and pulling it apart, the Hasid had to still his critical faculties. ‘I will teach you the way Torah is best taught,’ Dov Ber used to say: ‘not to feel [conscious of] oneself at all, but to be like a listening ear that hears the world of sound speaking but does not speak itself.’ 15 The exegete had to make himself a vessel for the divine presence. The Torah must act upon him, as though he were its instrument. 16 Hasidism aroused fierce opposition from orthodox Jews, who were appalled by the Besht’s apparent denigration of the scholarly study of Torah. They became known as the Misnagdim (‘opponents’). Their leader was Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (1720–97), head (gaon) of the academy of Vilna in Lithuania. Torah study was the Gaon’s chief passion, but he was also proficient in astronomy, anatomy, mathematics and foreign languages. Even though he studied scripture more aggressively than the Hasidim, the Gaon’s method was in its own way mystical. He relished what he called the ‘effort’ of study, an intense mental activity that tipped him into a new level of consciousness, and kept him at his books all night, his feet immersed in icy water to prevent him from falling asleep. When he did allow himself to doze off, the Torah penetrated his dreams and he experienced an ascent to the divine. ‘He who studies Torah communes with God,’ one of his disciples claimed, ‘for God and the Torah are one.’ 17 In Western Europe, however, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find God in scripture. The ethos of the Enlightenment had inspired more scholars to study the Bible critically, but it was impossible to experience its transcendent dimension without the gestures and disposition of prayer. In England, some of the more radical deists used the new scholarly methods to undermine the Bible. 18 The mathematician William Whiston (1667–1752) believed that early Christianity had been a more rational faith. In 1745 he published a version of the New Testament from which he had erased every reference to the Incarnation and the Trinity, doctrines that, he claimed, had been foisted on the faithful by the fathers of the Church. The Irish deist John Toland (1670– 1722) tried to replace the New Testament with a manuscript that purported to be the long-lost Jewish-Christian gospel of Barnabas, which denied the divinity of Christ. Other sceptics argued that the text of the New Testament was so corrupt that it was impossible to determine what the Bible actually said. But the distinguished classicist Richard Bentley (1662–1742) mounted a scholarly campaign in the Bible’s defence. Using the critical techniques now applied to Graeco-Roman literature, he showed that it was possible to reconstruct the original manuscripts by collating and analysing the variants.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  A hand stretched towards Ezekiel holding a scroll, which was inscribed with ‘lamentations, wailing, and moanings’. ‘Eat this scroll,’ a divine voice commanded him, ‘feed and be satisfied by the scroll I am giving you.’ When he forced it down, accepting the pain and misery of his exile, Ezekiel found that ‘it tasted sweet as honey’. 2 It was a prophetic moment. The exiles would continue to long for their lost temple, because in the Middle East at this period, it was impossible to imagine religion without one. 3 But the time would come when Israelites would make contact with their God in sacred writings, rather than a shrine. Their holy book would not be easy to understand. Like Ezekiel’s scroll, its message often seemed distressing and incoherent. Yet when they made the effort to absorb this confusing text, making it a part of their inmost being, they would feel that they had come into the presence of God – just as they did when they had visited his shrine in Jerusalem. But it would be many years before Yahwism became a religion of the book. The exiles had brought a number of scrolls from the royal archive in Jerusalem with them to Babylon, and there they studied and edited these documents. If they were allowed to return home, these records of the history and cult of their people could play an important role in the restoration of national life. But the scribes did not regard these writings as sacrosanct and felt free to add new passages, altering them to fit their changed circumstances. They had as yet no notion of a sacred text. True, there were many stories in the Middle East about heavenly tablets that had descended miraculously to earth and imparted secret, divine knowledge. There were tales in Israel about the engraved stones that Yahweh had given to his prophet Moses, who had spoken with him face to face. 4 But the scrolls in the Judaean archive were not in this league, and did not play any part in the cult of Israel. The Israelites, like most peoples in the ancient world, had always handed on their traditions by word of mouth. In the early days of their nation, in about 1200 BCE, they had lived in twelve tribal units in the Canaanite highlands but believed that they had a common ancestry and a shared history, which they celebrated in shrines associated with one of their patriarchs or an important event. Bards recited the epic stories of the sacred past and the people formally renewed the covenant agreement that bound them together as the am Yahweh, ‘the family of Yahweh’. Already, at this very early stage, Israel had a distinctive religious vision.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  When he forced it down, accepting the pain and misery of his exile, Ezekiel found that ‘it tasted sweet as honey’. 2 It was a prophetic moment. The exiles would continue to long for their lost temple, because in the Middle East at this period, it was impossible to imagine religion without one. 3 But the time would come when Israelites would make contact with their God in sacred writings, rather than a shrine. Their holy book would not be easy to understand. Like Ezekiel’s scroll, its message often seemed distressing and incoherent. Yet when they made the effort to absorb this confusing text, making it a part of their inmost being, they would feel that they had come into the presence of God – just as they did when they had visited his shrine in Jerusalem. But it would be many years before Yahwism became a religion of the book. The exiles had brought a number of scrolls from the royal archive in Jerusalem with them to Babylon, and there they studied and edited these documents. If they were allowed to return home, these records of the history and cult of their people could play an important role in the restoration of national life. But the scribes did not regard these writings as sacrosanct and felt free to add new passages, altering them to fit their changed circumstances. They had as yet no notion of a sacred text. True, there were many stories in the Middle East about heavenly tablets that had descended miraculously to earth and imparted secret, divine knowledge. There were tales in Israel about the engraved stones that Yahweh had given to his prophet Moses, who had spoken with him face to face. 4 But the scrolls in the Judaean archive were not in this league, and did not play any part in the cult of Israel . The Israelites, like most peoples in the ancient world, had always handed on their traditions by word of mouth. In the early days of their nation, in about 1200 BCE , they had lived in twelve tribal units in the Canaanite highlands but believed that they had a common ancestry and a shared history, which they celebrated in shrines associated with one of their patriarchs or an important event. Bards recited the epic stories of the sacred past and the people formally renewed the covenant agreement that bound them together as the am Yahweh, ‘the family of Yahweh’. Already, at this very early stage, Israel had a distinctive religious vision. Most peoples in the region developed a mythology and liturgy that centred on the world of the gods in primordial time, but Israelites focused on their life with Yahweh in this world.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I looked up at her hesitantly. Aunt Raylene’s face was beet-red, and her eyes were not on me. They were looking out past the highway. She seemed like she wanted to cry almost as much as I did, but like me, wasn’t going to let herself. “I said, go wash yourself.” I went. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] The stories I made up for myself changed. In the half-sleep that preceded full sleep I began to imagine the highway that went north. No real road, this highway was shadowed by tall grass and ancient trees. Moss hung low and tiny birds with gray-blue wings darted from the road’s edge to the trees. Cars passed at a roar but did not stop, and the north star shone above their headlights like a beacon. I walked that road alone, my legs swinging easily as I covered the miles. No one stopped. No one called to me. Only the star guided me, and I was not sure where I would end. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] I stayed at Raylene’s for three days, and then Mama called to say I either had to come back or start school out there. I’d heard about the country school from Garvey years before, and knew I would hate it. They didn’t even have a library. Reluctantly, I went back to the apartment over the Fish Market. Mama bought me a new pair of sneakers to replace the ones I had worn out, but said nothing about me running off in the first place. Several times I caught her watching me with a painful concentrated expression, but I didn’t ask her what she was thinking. Reese told me that she had been crazy-angry when I turned up gone, and was ready to call the police when Aunt Raylene called. “They talked about you a long time,” she said. “Aunt Raylene told Mama to let you get it out of your system, and Mama told Aunt Raylene to mind her own business. I thought they were gonna yell at each other like they used to, but Mama just gave in. She said she didn’t know what to do with you, didn’t know what to do with nobody, and Raylene could keep you if you wanted to stay.” Reese grinned at me almost sweetly. “I didn’t think you’d come back at all. I was all ready to take over your side of the bed for good.” Reese’s biggest complaint was that she was in the middle and Mama and I were both restless sleepers. “I wouldn’t want Mama to be mad at me the way she’s been mad at you,” she added. “I don’t see how you can stand it.” I didn’t either.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  All her features were outlined under the sheer material, but her breath puffed the silk out over her lips. Frantically, she snatched them off and shoved them behind her on the bed. I grabbed a book I had been reading off the dresser and pretended I hadn’t seen anything. Reese played out her own stories in the woods behind the house. I watched her one afternoon from the top of the tree Mama hung her birdfeeder on. She hadn’t seen me climb up there and didn’t know I had a clear view of her as she ran around in an old sheet tied to her neck like a cape. She seemed to be pretending to fight off imaginary attackers. Then she dropped to the ground and pretended to be wrestling. Rolling around in the grass and wet leaves she kept shouting “No! No!” The haughty expression on her face was replaced by mock terror as she threw her head back and forth wildly like the heroine in an adventure movie. I hugged myself tightly to the tree and rocked my hips against the indifferent trunk. I imagined I was tied to the branches above and below me. Someone had beaten me with dry sticks and put their hands in my clothes. Someone, someone, I imagined. Someone had tied me high up in the tree, gagged me and left me to starve to death while the blackbirds pecked at my ears. I rocked and rocked, pushing my thighs into the rough bark. Below me, Reese pushed her hips into the leaves and made grunting noises. Someone, someone, she imagined, was doing terrible exciting things to her. Reese and I never talked about our private games, our separate hours alone in the bedroom. These days we barely talked at all. But we made sure no one else ever went in the bedroom when one of us was there alone. It was the worst time for Reese and me to be fighting. Neither of us was ever supposed to be home in the afternoon without the other, but I couldn’t tell when she might blow up at me and run off somewhere. Daddy Glen had gotten his dairy routes changed and no longer had a full schedule. He’d been coming home a lot in the afternoons and had gone back to looking worried all the time. He’d yell at me one day that I was getting too big to run around in a T-shirt with no bra, and the next accuse me of pretending to be grown-up. Mama said he was fighting with his daddy and we were to stay out of his way until things settled down.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Thus, dear my lord, thy vassal am I grown And of thy might obediently await Grace for my lowliness; Yet wot I not if wholly there be known The high desire that in my breast thou'st set And my sheer faith, no less, Of her who doth possess My heart so that from none beneath the skies, Save her alone, peace would I take or prize. Wherefore I pray thee, sweet my lord and sire, Discover it to her and cause her taste Some scantling of thy heat To-me-ward,--for thou seest that in the fire, Loving, I languish and for torment waste By inches at her feet,-- And eke in season meet Commend me to her favour on such wise As I would plead for thee, should need arise.[293] [Footnote 293: This singularly naïve give-and-take fashion of asking a favour of a God recalls the old Scotch epitaph cited by Mr. George Macdonald: Here lie I Martin Elginbrodde: Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God; As I wad do, were I Lord God And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.] Dioneo, by his silence, showing that his song was ended, the queen let sing many others, having natheless much commended his. Then, somedele of the night being spent and the queen feeling the heat of the day to be now overcome of the coolness of the night, she bade each at his pleasure betake himself to rest against the ensuing day. HERE ENDETH THE FIFTH DAY OF THE DECAMERON _Day the Sixth_ HERE BEGINNETH THE SIXTH DAY OF THE DECAMERON WHEREIN UNDER THE GOVERNANCE OF ELISA IS DISCOURSED OF WHOSO BEING ASSAILED WITH SOME JIBING SPEECH HATH VINDICATED HIMSELF OR HATH WITH SOME READY REPLY OR ADVISEMENT ESCAPED LOSS, PERIL OR SHAME

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  He shakes his head. “I thought it was just of two very depressed people on the beach.” I smile. “We are like the first two people,” I say. “Adam and Eve?” He’s already so full of disbelief I don’t even want to tell him the rest. I shrug. “Sure.” “Go on,” he says. “God put them in the garden and told them not to eat the forbidden fruit, remember?” Now it’s Isaac’s turn to shrug. “Yeah, I guess. Sunday school one-o- one.” “Once they were tempted and ate the fruit they were on their own, exiled from God’s provision and his protection in the place he created for them.” When Isaac doesn’t say anything, I go on. “They leave perfection and have to fend for themselves—hunt, garden, experience cold and death and childbirth.” I flush after the last word leaves my mouth. It was dumb of me to mention childbirth considering Daphne and their unborn baby. But Isaac doesn’t skip a beat. “So you’re saying,” he says, crinkling his eyebrows together, “that so long as we stay here—in the place our kidnapper provided for us—we will be safe and he will keep the heat and food coming?” “It’s just a wild guess, Isaac. I don’t really know.” “So what’s the forbidden fruit?” I tap my finger on the tabletop. “The keypad, maybe…” “This is sick,” he says. “And if one painting means that much, what else is hidden in here?” I don’t want to think about it. “I’ll make dinner tonight,” I say. I look out the window as I peel potatoes over the sink. And then I look down at the peelings, all piled up and gross looking. We should eat those. We will probably be starving soon, wishing we had a sliver of potato skin. I scoop up shreds and hold them in my palm, not sure what to do with them. I counted the potatoes before I chose four of the smallest ones out of the fifty-pound bag. Seventy potatoes. How long could we stretch that? And the flour, and rice and oatmeal? It seemed like a lot, but we had no idea how long we’d be imprisoned here. Imprisoned. Here. I eat the skins. At least they won’t go to waste that way. God. I am grimacing and gagging on my potato skin when I drop the potato I’m holding into the sink and press the heel of my hand to my forehead. I have to focus. Stay positive. I can’t let myself sink into that dark place. My therapist tried to teach me techniques to cope with emotional overload. Why hadn’t I listened? I remember something about a garden … walking through it and touching flowers. Was that what she’d said?

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  The first thing he played was a favourite gavotte of mine—one of those slight, graceful, and easy melodies that seem to smell of lavande ambrée , and in some way or other put you in mind of Lulli and Watteau, of powdered ladies dressed in yellow satin gowns, flirting with their fans." "And then?" "As he reached the end of the piece, he cast several sidelong glances towards—as I thought—the lady patroness. When he was about to rise, my mother—who was seated behind me—tapped me on my shoulder with her fan, only to make one of the many unseasonable remarks women are for ever pestering you with, so that, by the time I had turned round to applaud, he had disappeared." "And what happened afterwards?" "Let me see. I think there was some singing." "But did he not play any more?" "Oh, yes! He came out again towards the middle of the concert. As he bowed, before taking his place at the piano, his eyes seemed to be looking out for someone in the pit. It was then—as I thought—that our glances met for the first time." "What kind of a man was he?" "He was a rather tall and slight young man of twenty-four. His hair, short and curled—after the fashion Bressan, the actor, had brought into vogue—was of a peculiar ashy hue; but this—as I knew afterwards—was due to its being always imperceptibly powdered. Anyhow, the fairness of his hair contrasted with his dark eyebrows and his short moustache. His complexion was of that warm, healthy paleness which, I believe, artists often have in their youth. His eyes—though generally taken for black—were of a deep blue colour; and although they ever appeared so quiet and serene, still a close observer would every now and then have seen in them a scared and wistful look, as if he were gazing at some dreadful dim and distant vision. An expression of the deepest sorrow invariably succeeded this painful glamour." "And what was the reason of his sadness?" "At first, whenever I asked him, he always shrugged his shoulders, and answered laughingly, 'Do you never see ghosts?' When I got to be on more intimate terms with him, his invariable reply was—'My fate; that horrible, horrible fate of mine!' But then, smiling and arching his eyebrows, he always hummed, ' Non ci pensiam. '" "He was not of a gloomy or brooding disposition, was he?" "No, not at all; he was only very superstitious." "As all artists, I believe." "Or rather, all persons like—well, like ourselves; for nothing renders people so superstitious as vice —— " "Or ignorance." "Oh! that is quite a different kind of superstition."

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  How wonderful the outlook upon the blue wall of high mountains interwoven with golden sunlight; mountain-torrents weave through them like ribbons of silver! How clear and blue the heavens into which snowcapped crags project; how green and fresh the forested slopes; the meadows on which small herds graze, down to the yellow billows of grain where reapers stand and bend over and rise up again. The house in which I live stands in a sort of park, or forest, or wilderness, whatever one wants to call it, and is very solitary. Its sole inhabitants are myself, a widow from Lemberg, and Madame Tartakovska, who runs the house, a little old woman, who grows older and smaller each day. There are also an old dog that limps on one leg, and a young cat that continually plays with a ball of yarn. This ball of yarn, I believe, belongs to the widow. She is said to be really beautiful, this widow, still very young, twenty-four at the most, and very rich. She dwells in the first story, and I on the ground floor. She always keeps the green blinds drawn, and has a balcony entirely overgrown with green climbing-plants. I for my part down below have a comfortable, intimate arbor of honeysuckle, in which I read and write and paint and sing like a bird among the twigs. I can look up on the balcony. Sometimes I actually do so, and then from time to time a white gown gleams between the dense green network. Really the beautiful woman up there doesn’t interest me very much, for I am in love with someone else, and terribly unhappy at that; far more unhappy than the Knight of Toggenburg or the Chevalier in Manon l’Escault, because the object of my adoration is of stone. In the garden, in the tiny wilderness, there is a graceful little meadow on which a couple of deer graze peacefully. On this meadow is a stone statue of Venus, the original of which, I believe, is in Florence. This Venus is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in all my life. That, however, does not signify much, for I have seen few beautiful women, or rather few women at all. In love too, I am a dilettante who never got beyond the preparation, the first act. But why talk in superlatives, as if something that is beautiful could be surpassed? It is sufficient to say that this Venus is beautiful.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  And I cannot imagine this woman, this strange ideal derived from an aesthetics of ugliness, this soul of Nero in the body of a Phryne, except in furs.” “I understand,” Wanda interrupted. “It gives a dominant and imposing quality to a woman.” “Not only that,” I continued. “You know I am supersensual. With me everything has its roots in the imagination, and thence it receives its nourishment. I was already pre-maturely developed and highly sensitive, when at about the age of ten the legends of the martyrs fell into my hands. I remember reading with a kind of horror, which really was rapture, of how they pined in prisons, were laid on the gridiron, pierced with arrows, boiled in pitch, thrown to wild animals, nailed to the cross, and suffered the most horrible torment with a kind of joy. To suffer and endure cruel torture from then on seemed to me exquisite delight, especially when it was inflicted by a beautiful woman, for ever since I can remember all poetry and everything demonic was for me concentrated in woman. I literally carried the idea into a sort of cult. “I felt there was something sacred in sex; in fact, it was the only sacred thing. In woman and her beauty I saw something divine, because the most important function of existence—the continuation of the species—is her vocation. To me woman represented a personification of nature, Isis , and man was her priest, her slave. In contrast to him she was cruel like nature herself who tosses aside whatever has served her purposes as soon as she no longer has need for it. To him her cruelties, even death itself, still were sensual raptures. “I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Brunhilde fettered on the bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress had sewed in the skins of wolves to have him hunted like game. I envied the Knight Ctirad whom the daring Amazon Scharka craftily ensnared in a forest near Prague, and carried to her castle Divin, where, after having amused herself a while with him, she had him broken on the wheel—” “Disgusting,” cried Wanda. “I almost wish you might fall into the hands of a woman of their savage race. In the wolf’s skin, under the teeth of the dogs, or upon the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of poetry.” “Do you think so? I hardly do.” “Have you actually lost your senses.” “Possibly. But let me go on. I developed a perfect passion for reading stories in which the extremest cruelties were described. I loved especially to look at pictures and prints which represented them.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  How could music know what you were feeling? How could it help you name it? I went to my closet. There was a box on my top shelf. I pulled it down and ripped off the lid. There was a red vase. Bright. Brighter than blood. My father sent it to me when my first book was published. I thought it was terrible—so bright it hurt my eyes. Now, my eyes were drawn to the color. I carried it to my white room and set it on the desk. Now there was blood everywhere. I searched for a song for days. I was new to the wonders of iTunes. I went back to Florence Welch. There was something about the intensity of her. I found it. I didn’t know how to transfer it to one of those generic CD’s he used. But I found out. Then I drove to the hospital, the disk on my lap the whole time. I stood for a long time next to his car. This was a bold move. It was color. I didn’t know I had any color. I put the brown envelope on his windshield, and hoped for the best. His songs reminded me of swimming, which somehow I’d forgotten. He didn’t come right away. He probably wouldn’t have come at all if he hadn’t seen me at the hospital a few weeks later. I’d gone to sign some of the financial paperwork for my bill. Insurance crap. I only saw him briefly—a few seconds, tops. He was with Dr. Akela. They had been walking down the hall together, their identical white coats differentiating them from the other humans milling around the nurses’ station—two demi-gods in a sea of humans. I froze when I saw him, felt a feeling only drugs can give you. He was headed for the elevator, same as me. Oh great, this is going to suck. If there were people in the elevator I could scoot to the back and hide. I waited hopefully, but when the doors slid open the only people inside were on the poster advertisement for erectile dysfunction. We should do this more often, the slogan said. A handsome, athletic couple in their late forties, woman looking coy. I jumped in and hit the lobby button with my fist. Close! It did. Thankfully, it did, but before the doors sealed shut Isaac appeared in the gap. For a second it looked like he was going to hold a hand between the doors, force them to open. He drew back instead, the shock sketched around his eyes. He hadn’t been expecting to see me today. We should do this more often, I thought. It all happened in a dizzy three seconds. The time it takes for you to blink, blink and blink.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  As soon as she saw who it was, her shoulders slumped, and she walked toward him. Rathbun talked to Miscavige and said that he would get a couple of hotel rooms in Boston and bring Annie back in the morning, but Miscavige was unwilling to risk it. He told Rathbun that he had already arranged for John Travolta’s jet to pick them up a few hours later. Annie and Jim Logan were finally divorced on August 26, 1993. He never saw her again. (She died in 2011 of lung cancer, at the age of fifty- five.) BY HIS ACTIONS, Miscavige showed his instinctive understanding of how to cater to the sense of entitlement that comes with great stardom. It was not just a matter of disposing of awkward personal problems, such as clinging spouses; there were also the endless demands for nourishment of an ego that is always aware of the fragility of success; the longing for privacy that is constantly at war with the demand for recognition; the need to be fortified against ordinariness and feelings of mortality; and the sense that the quality of the material world that surrounds you reflects upon your own value, and therefore everything must be made perfect. These were qualities Miscavige demanded for himself as well. He surrounded Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman with an approving and completely deferential environment, as spotless and odorless as a fairy tale. A special bungalow was prepared for their stay at Gold Base, along with a private rose garden. When the couple longed to play tennis, a court was rehabilitated, at significant expense. Miscavige heard about the couple’s fantasy of running through a field of wildflowers together, so he had Sea Org members plant a section of the desert; when that failed to meet his expectations, the meadow was plowed up and sodded with grass. Miscavige assigned them a personal chef, Sinar Parman, who had cooked for Hubbard, and had a high-end gym constructed that was mainly for the use of Cruise and himself. When a flood triggered a mudslide that despoiled the couple’s romantic bungalow, Miscavige held the entire base responsible, and ordered everyone to work sixteen-hour days until everything was restored to its previous pristine condition. In July 1990, Cruise’s involvement with the church became public in an article in the tabloid Star. (Cruise himself didn’t admit his affiliation until two years later, in an interview with Barbara Walters.) The fact that the information was leaked, probably from a source within the church, was at once a great embarrassment for Miscavige and a relief, because Cruise’s name was now finally linked irrevocably in the public mind with Scientology.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  S. Taylor, New York Times , October 26, 1983, p. A19. 6. A. Lewis, New York Times , November 3, 1983 and A. Cockburn, Village Voice , November 8, 1983, p. 10. 7. S. Mydans, New York Times , January 15, 1984, p. 9. 8. Christian Science Monitor , November 7, 1983. 9. A. Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal , October 26, 1983. 10. C. Sunshine, ed., Grenada — The Peaceful Revolution (E.P.I.C.A., Washington, D.C., 1982) . 11. C. Sunshine, The Guardian , December 28, 1983. 12. E. Ray and B. Schaap, “U.S. Crushes Caribbean Jewel,” Covert Action Bulletin # 20 , Winter 1984, p. 11. 13. Ibid., p. 13. 14. Ibid., p. 5. 15. S. Taylor, New York Times , November 6, 1983, p. 20. 16. Ibid. 17. Washington Post , November 21, 1983. 18. CBS Evening News, December 18, 1983. 19. The London Guardian , November 4, 1983. 20. Grenada — The Peaceful Revolution , p. 87. 21. Carriacou — In the Mainstream of the Revolution (Fedon Publishers, St. Georges, Grenada, 1982), pp. 54–57. 22. Slogan of the Grenadian Revolution * I spent a week in Grenada in late December, 1983, barely two months after the U.S. invasion of the Black Caribbean island my parents left some sixty years earlier. It was my second visit in five years. This is an interim essay, a report written as the rest of Sister Outsider was already being typeset. Notes from a Trip to Russia * S INCE I’VE RETURNED from Russia a few weeks ago, I’ve been dreaming a lot. At first I dreamt about Moscow every night. Sometimes my lover and I had returned there; sometimes I would be in warmer, familiar places I had visited; sometimes in different, unfamiliar cities, cold, white, strange. In one dream, I was making love to a woman behind a stack of clothing in Gumm’s Department Store in Moscow. She was ill, and we went upstairs, where I said to a matron, “We have to get her to the hospital.” The matron said, “All right, you take her over there and tell them that she needs a kidney scan and a brain scan …” And I said, “No, they’re not going to do that for me.” And she looked at me very strangely and she said, “Of course they will.” And I realized I was in Russia, and medicine and doctor bills and all the rest of that are free. My dreams don’t come every night anymore, but it seems as if they’ve gotten deeper and deeper so that I awake not really knowing any of the content of them but only knowing that I’ve just dreamt about Russia again. For a while, in my dreams, Russia became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet exist anywhere I have been.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  And everyone knows and feels how closely sexual love and cruelty are related.” “But in my case all these elements are raised to their highest degree,” I replied. “In other words, reason has little power over you, and you are by nature, soft, sensual, yielding.” “Were the martyrs also soft and sensual by nature?” “The martyrs?” “On the contrary, they were supersensual men, who found enjoyment in suffering. They sought out the most frightful tortures, even death itself, as others seek joy, and as they were, so am I— supersensual.” “Have a care that in being such, you do not become a martyr to love, the martyr of a woman .” We are sitting on Wanda’s little balcony in the mellow fragrant summer night. A twofold roof is above us, first the green ceiling of climbing-plants, and then the vault of heaven sown with innumerable stars. The low wailing love-call of a cat rises from the park. I am sitting on footstool at the feet of my divinity, and am telling her of my childhood. “And even then all these strange tendencies were distinctly marked in you?” asked Wanda. “Of course, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have them. Even in my cradle, so mother has told me, I was supersensual. I scorned the healthy breast of my nurse, and had to be brought up on goats’ milk. As a little boy I was mysteriously shy before women, which really was only an expression of an inordinate interest in them. I was oppressed by the gray arches and half-darknesses of the church, and actually afraid of the glittering altars and images of the saints. Secretly, however, I sneaked as to a secret joy to a plaster-Venus which stood in my father’s little library. I kneeled down before her, and to her I said the prayers I had been taught—the Paternoster, the Ave Maria, and the Credo. “Once at night I left my bed to visit her. The sickle of the moon was my light and showed me the goddess in a pale-blue cold light. I prostrated myself before her and kissed her cold feet, as I had seen our peasants do when they kissed the feet of the dead Savior. “An irresistible yearning seized me. “I got up and embraced the beautiful cold body and kissed the cold lips. A deep shudder fell upon me and I fled, and later in a dream, it seemed to me, as if the goddess stood beside my bed, threatening me with up-raised arm. “I was sent to school early and soon reached the gymnasium. I passionately grasped at everything which promised to make the world of antiquity accessible to me.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Most members of The Group recall their first identifiable sexual fantasies between the ages of eight and fourteen, well past the Oedipal stage. Typically, they describe a combination of mental imagery and unfamiliar body sensations—such as warmth and tingling “down there”—when they imagined being close to a favorite movie or TV star or a special teacher, or wistfully yearned for the attention of a someone who seemed highly desirable and disinterested. Debbie is one of many men and women who recall such early “crushes.” She was about nine or ten when she became infatuated with a teenage boy who lived next door: I remember trying to get his attention when he was cutting the lawn with his shirt off. He was very sweet but mostly he ignored me. One summer day he and his family were visiting and I was jumping around in my inflatable pool. I arranged for my bathing suit to sort of “fall off,” hoping that he would notice. Everyone just laughed—not the reaction I was looking for. It must have been a year or two that I fantasized that he would sneak into my room late at night and carry me with his strong arms to his bed. I felt so funny when I thought of him. It’s now clear to me that I was turned on. Debbie’s attempts to gain the attention of the object of her longing are virtually identical to those seen in adult attractions, although most grown-ups use slightly subtler methods (but not necessarily). Also like Debbie, most young longers imagine someone older initiating and guiding them into a new realm of experience that is as fascinating as it is confusing. LONGING AND FANTASYLonging has a unique relationship with fantasy. Whether the object of longing is real or imaginary, I believe that longing is fantasy, for both children and adults. When you long intensely, you not only form a mental picture of the one you desire, you can actually feel what it was (or might be) like to be close to that person. Without the ability to fantasize, longing simply cannot occur. Longing, like all acts of imagination, is highly selective. It focuses your mind on the most desirable qualities of a person and ignores or downplays the unappealing ones. If you actually have a relationship with the object of your longing, you look forward to opportunities to be with him or her and relish any communications you may have. The briefest of notes, a moment on the phone, a flower, a knowing glance across a room, or even a secondhand message fragment—any of these can stimulate your desire.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  If I surrender too quickly it’s not nearly so exciting as when I get the full seduction treatment. It makes me feel feminine and beguiling to be chased. I imagine they can’t resist me. Now that I live with a wonderful man I’m still always waiting for him to initiate sex (which he complains about a lot). It’s hard to admit, but when he comes on to me forcefully it’s almost like getting even with my sister who I both loved and hated for being so damned perfect. When it all works—which it always does in fantasy and occasionally in reality—I’m getting the attention I’ve craved all my life. As is usually the case, the goal of Jana’s CET is simple and straightforward: to demonstrate her worth by being the object of pursuit. Her CET is a formula for soothing the hurt of perceiving herself as ugly, inferior, second-best. At the same time, her CET reverses the outcome of the painful rivalry she felt with her sister because she wins; now she’s the desired one. Within its simple framework, a CET brings together all the varied aspects of erotic life we have explored thus far. Notice, for instance, how Jana makes her pursuers surmount obstacles to get to her. Without consciously realizing it she’s been using the erotic equation. In addition, virtually every CET I’ve heard of rests on one or more of the four cornerstones of eroticism. For Jana, the drama of searching for power is played out when she demonstrates her control by “forcing” men to pursue her. By winning the prize of an appealing man, she temporarily conquers her feelings of inferiority. I’ve consistently noticed that in pursuer-pursued scenarios—among the most common of all CETs—overcoming ambivalence also plays a central role. Although Jana doesn’t say so, I would guess that she experiences ambivalence toward her pursuers similarly to what she always has felt toward her sister. After all, her worth is on the line; she’s at their mercy. In addition, just below the surface of Jana’s story flows a deep undercurrent of longing for the love and respect that came so easily to her sister. Every CET is also energized by one or more emotional aphrodisiacs. Jana is courageously honest in recognizing that she enjoys a sense of revenge against her sister as her own value is acclaimed. I would also speculate that when it’s unclear if the pursuer will be sufficiently persistent, Jana’s anxiety level escalates considerably. SEARCHING FOR WHOLENESSNot only is the CET a creative strategy for transforming emotional pain into excitation, it’s also an expression of a quest for wholeness and completion. CETs help us select partners who value our strengths and compensate for our weaknesses, crucial aspects of the “chemistry” of attraction. Through a process Dr. Tripp calls “exporting,” our self-esteem is boosted when someone wants what we have to offer. It can be particularly rewarding to be desired for qualities about which we normally feel insecure.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Most members of The Group recall their first identifiable sexual fantasies between the ages of eight and fourteen, well past the Oedipal stage. Typically, they describe a combination of mental imagery and unfamiliar body sensations—such as warmth and tingling “down there”—when they imagined being close to a favorite movie or TV star or a special teacher, or wistfully yearned for the attention of a someone who seemed highly desirable and disinterested. Debbie is one of many men and women who recall such early “crushes.” She was about nine or ten when she became infatuated with a teenage boy who lived next door: I remember trying to get his attention when he was cutting the lawn with his shirt off. He was very sweet but mostly he ignored me. One summer day he and his family were visiting and I was jumping around in my inflatable pool. I arranged for my bathing suit to sort of “fall off,” hoping that he would notice. Everyone just laughed—not the reaction I was looking for. It must have been a year or two that I fantasized that he would sneak into my room late at night and carry me with his strong arms to his bed. I felt so funny when I thought of him. It’s now clear to me that I was turned on. Debbie’s attempts to gain the attention of the object of her longing are virtually identical to those seen in adult attractions, although most grown-ups use slightly subtler methods (but not necessarily). Also like Debbie, most young longers imagine someone older initiating and guiding them into a new realm of experience that is as fascinating as it is confusing. LONGING AND FANTASYLonging has a unique relationship with fantasy. Whether the object of longing is real or imaginary, I believe that longing is fantasy, for both children and adults. When you long intensely, you not only form a mental picture of the one you desire, you can actually feel what it was (or might be) like to be close to that person. Without the ability to fantasize, longing simply cannot occur. Longing, like all acts of imagination, is highly selective. It focuses your mind on the most desirable qualities of a person and ignores or downplays the unappealing ones. If you actually have a relationship with the object of your longing, you look forward to opportunities to be with him or her and relish any communications you may have. The briefest of notes, a moment on the phone, a flower, a knowing glance across a room, or even a secondhand message fragment—any of these can stimulate your desire.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  With the sky so huge and those clouds just hanging there?” “Do I come out here sometimes and play with myself?” Dave nodded. “Yeah. Do you do rude things to your little pulsing happy bloated clit, who’s sitting there in the prow of the boat, looking backward at the rowers with her horn saying, ‘Row, team, row, row the boat faster, and when you reach the shore, slide way up on the warm sand’? Do you do that?” The woman looked down at her dog for a moment, and then she said, “Once I did sort of take my pants off.” “What made you do it?” “It was a hot day, and I wanted to feel the breeze on my bottom—I think that’s why.” “Don’t you want to feel the breeze now?” “Mm, but this is an awkward situation.” “I know it’s awkward but, hey, that’s what makes it fun. I’ve spent all day in the darned Porndecahedron looking at self-filmed amateur masturbation movies, and I’ve seen almost too much of it, if that’s possible.” “You’re at the House of Holes, and you’re watching mas-turbation movies? I thought it was a sexual paradise.” “It is,” said Dave. “People masturbate a lot in paradise, let me tell you. Have you been?” “Nope, never have. We sometimes get people wandering over, so I’ve heard some stories, but I’ve never gone. My husband and I—” She trailed off. “And my kids.” “The whole family thing. I see. ” “They’re at school—and my husband’s doing one of his trips to France to the cheesemakers’ convention, so I’m here, and I’m—what can I say—walking the dog.” Dave had an idea. “Look, you’re a neighbor to the House of Holes. You should pay a quick visit. I’ll take you. You can just look around. I’m sure Lila—she’s the director—would want to cultivate good relations with abutters.” He peered at her rear. “And you’re definitely an abutter.” “I’ve heard about Lila. But no, thanks. Maybe another time.” “Okay.” They stood on the shoulder of the road. “Well, I’ll be off, then. But will you walk me to the property line? I want to come back here, and I don’t want to trespass.” “Sure. It’s through here,” she said, parting some shrubbery. Her dog made a brief yip of pain. “Oh, sorry, Gumball. Careful, Dave, there are some serious thorns here.” “Thanks, having the one arm makes some things more difficult.” “What happened? An accident?” “No, it was intentional. I wanted a really big penis, and Lila said that I had a choice. I could either lose twenty percent of my intelligence or lose my right arm. And it’s all totally reversible. I really wanted a bigger penis, a monster cock, I was tired of looking at my own. I’m not quite sure why. I guess all the Internet spam finally took its toll.