Longing

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Serpuhovskoy's smile and gestures told Vronsky that he mustn't be afraid, that he would be tender and careful in touching the sore place. 'But I'm married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as some one has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.' 'We're coming directly!' Vronsky shouted to an officer, who looked into the room and called them to the colonel. Vronsky was longing now to hear to the end and know what Serpuhovskoy would say to him. 'And here's my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling-block in a man's career. It's hard to love a woman and do anything. There's only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance—that's marriage. How, how am I to tell you what I mean?' said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes. 'Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a fardeau and do something with your hands, when the fardeau is tied on your back, and that's marriage. And that's what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to drag that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov. They've ruined their careers for the sake of women.' 'What women!' said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected. 'The firmer the woman's footing in society, the worse it is. That's much the same as—not merely carrying the fardeau in your arms— but tearing it away from someone else.' 'You have never loved,' Vronsky said softly, looking straight before him and thinking of Anna. 'Perhaps. But you remember what I've said to you. And another thing, women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense out of love, but they are always terre-à-terre.' 'Directly, directly!' he cried to a footman who came in. But the footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman brought Vronsky a note. 'A man brought it from Princess Tverskoy.' Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson. 'My head's begun to ache; I'm going home,' he said to Serpuhovskoy. 'Oh, good-bye then. You give me carte blanche !' 'We'll talk about it later on; I'll look you up in Petersburg.' XXII I T was six o'clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and at the same time not to drive with his own horse, known to everyone, Vronsky got into Yashvin's hired fly, and told the driver to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for four.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Strange to say, so patent a fact as the perpetual presence of selective attention has received hardly any notice from psychologists of the English empiricist school. The Germans have explicitly treated of it, either as a faculty or as a resultant, but in the pages of such writers as Locke, Hume, Hartley, the Mills, and Spencer the word hardly occurs, or if it does so, it is parenthetically and as if by inadvertence.[321] The motive of this ignoring of the phenomenon of attention is obvious enough. These writers are bent on showing how the higher faculties of the mind are pure products of 'experience;' and experience is supposed to be of something simply given . Attention, implying a degree of reactive spontaneity, would seem to break through the circle of pure receptivity which constitutes 'experience,' and hence must not be spoken of under penalty of interfering with the smoothness of the tale. But the moment one thinks of the matter, one sees how false a notion of experience that is which would make it tantamount to the mere presence to the senses of an outward order. Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to . Only those items which I notice shape my mind—without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground—intelligible perspective, in a word. It varies in every creature, but without it the consciousness of every creature would be a gray chaotic indiscriminateness, impossible for us even to conceive. Such an empiricist writer as Mr. Spencer, for example, regards the creature as absolutely passive clay, upon which 'experience' rains down. The clay will be impressed most deeply where the drops fall thickest, and so the final shape of the mind is moulded. Give time enough, and all sentient things ought, at this rate, to end by assuming an identical mental constitution—for 'experience,' the sole shaper, is a constant fact, and the order of its items must end by being exactly reflected by the passive mirror which we call the sentient organism. If such an account were true, a race of dogs bred for generations, say in the Vatican, with characters of visual shape, sculptured in marble, presented to their eyes, in every variety of form and combination, ought to discriminate before long the finest shades of these peculiar characters. In a word, they ought to become, if time were given, accomplished connoisseurs of sculpture. Anyone may judge of the probability of this consummation. Surely an eternity of experience of the statues would leave the dog as inartistic as he was at first, for the lack of an original interest to knit his discriminations on to.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  To many persons among us, photographs of lost ones seem to be fetishes. They, it is true, resemble; but the fact that the mere materiality of the reminder is almost as important as its resemblance is shown by the popularity a, hundred years ago of the black taffeta 'silhouettes' which are still found among family relies, and of one of which Fichte could write to his affianced: 'Die Farbe fehlt, das Auge fehlt, es fehlt der himmlische Ausdruck deiner lieblichen Züge'—and yet go on worshiping it all the same. The opinion so stoutly professed by many, that language is essential to thought, seems to have this much of truth in it, that all our inward images tend invincibly to attach themselves to something sensible, so as to gain in corporeity and life. Words serve this purpose, gestures serve it, stones, straws, chalk-marks, anything will do. As soon as anyone of these things stands for the idea, the latter seems to be more real. Some persons, the present writer among the number, can hardly lecture without a black-board: the abstract conceptions must be symbolized by letters, squares or circles, and the relations between them by lines. All this symbolism, linguistic, graphic, and dramatic, has other uses too, for it abridges thought and fixes terms. But one of its uses is surely to rouse the believing reaction and give to the ideas a more living reality. As, when we are told a story, and shown the very knife that did the murder, the very ring whose hiding-place the clairvoyant revealed, the whole thing passes from fairy-land to mother-earth, so here we believe all the more, if only we see that 'the bricks are alive to tell the tale.'

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  He dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with them to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them. He was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by Marianne, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him than even Elinor herself. To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between Edward and her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness which she had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour. On Edward’s side, more particularly, there was a deficiency of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. He was confused, seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked neither rapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by questions, and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection. Marianne saw and listened with increasing surprise. She began almost to feel a dislike of Edward; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her, by carrying back her thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a contrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect. After a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries of meeting, Marianne asked Edward if he came directly from London. No, he had been in Devonshire a fortnight. “A fortnight!” she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the same county with Elinor without seeing her before. He looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with some friends near Plymouth. “Have you been lately in Sussex?” said Elinor. “I was at Norland about a month ago.” “And how does dear, dear Norland look?” cried Marianne. “Dear, dear Norland,” said Elinor, “probably looks much as it always does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.” “Oh,” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.” “It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.” “No; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood. But sometimes they are.”—As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a few moments;—but rousing herself again, “Now, Edward,” said she, calling his attention to the prospect, “here is Barton valley. Look up to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever see their equals? To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and plantations. You may see the end of the house. And there, beneath that farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage.” “It is a beautiful country,” he replied; “but these bottoms must be dirty in winter.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such feelings;—she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on others;—represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the time of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan could do, and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, which was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not beyond one day, though a long day’s journey; and their mother’s servant might easily come there to attend them down; and as there could be no occasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be at home in little more than three weeks’ time. As Marianne’s affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started. Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guests, that she pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland. Elinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her design; and their mother’s concurrence being readily gained, every thing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be;—and Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that were yet to divide her from Barton. “Ah! Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss Dashwoods;”—was Mrs. Jennings’s address to him when he first called on her, after their leaving her was settled—“for they are quite resolved upon going home from the Palmers;—and how forlorn we shall be, when I come back!—Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two cats.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such feelings;—she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on others;—represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the time of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan could do, and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, which was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not beyond one day, though a long day’s journey; and their mother’s servant might easily come there to attend them down; and as there could be no occasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be at home in little more than three weeks’ time. As Marianne’s affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started. Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guests, that she pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland. Elinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her design; and their mother’s concurrence being readily gained, every thing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be;—and Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that were yet to divide her from Barton. “Ah! Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss Dashwoods;”—was Mrs. Jennings’s address to him when he first called on her, after their leaving her was settled—“for they are quite resolved upon going home from the Palmers;—and how forlorn we shall be, when I come back!—Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two cats.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor, impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved. Marianne pressed her hand and replied,— “You are very good.—The future must be my proof. I have laid down my plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it—my feelings shall be governed and my temper improved. They shall no longer worry others, nor torture myself. I shall now live solely for my family. You, my mother, and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will share my affections entirely between you. From you, from my home, I shall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do mix in other society, it will be only to show that my spirit is humbled, my heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. As for Willoughby—to say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle. His remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or opinions. But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment.” She paused—and added in a low voice, “If I could but know _his_ heart, everything would become easy.” Elinor, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at all nearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself leading to the fact. She managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief points on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard. Marianne said not a word.—She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand, unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister’s, and tears covered her cheeks.

• From The City of God

  129 Lecture 6 Transcript—The Price of Empire (Books 2–3) But for Augustine, the true tenor and the true terror of this idea, the libido dominandi, lies precisely in its indeterminacy between these two meanings, as we are caught between these two temptations. The libido dominandi can rightly be described as a lust, though that in a far broader sense than any reductive sexual categorization. And it can rightly be described as aggression, though again in a far deeper sense than sheer physical abuse. Both are forms of longing for a kind of utterly unconstrained agency, and both are forms of slavery to a longing that they can never fulfill, and both are both at the same time. It is, for Augustine, precisely when the Roman hero decides he has to destroy the city in order to save it, when he decides he has to kill his own children to save his own family, when he commits an act that is simultaneously savagely brutish and subhuman, and terrifyingly demonic and superhuman, that the libido dominandi is revealed in its full and tragic profundity. Such a picture of moral psychology is more accurate, because more comprehensive Augustine thinks, than either of its moralistic reductionisms would allow. It’s simply shallow to think that we are basically sexual beings, as some Freudians say, and it’s melodramatic to think that we are creatures lusting after some absolute power, as possibly some Nietzscheans suggest. We want love and domination, and they are genuinely different longings for us. Even Freud would allow—we hope—that sometimes sex is not ultimately only about sex. The essential form of the desire is prior to specification as sexual or political or intellectual or anything else. It’s something far more protean, more nebulous, than that. In fact, there is no single worldly coherence to the libido dominandi, because it is, in several senses, irredeemably theological. In its most basic form, it is the longing that governs humans after Eden in their desire to be like God. It is essentially an unstable, ambivalent, and ambiguous desire precisely because the fallen longing it expresses—rebellion against God and envy of God’s power—is unstable, ambivalent, and

• From The City of God

  Chapter 15. --That Everything Which the Grace of God Does in the Way of Rescuing Us from the Inveterate Evils in Which We are Sunk, Pertains to the Future World, in Which All Things are Made New. Nevertheless, in the "heavy yoke that is laid upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day that they return to the mother of all things," there is found an admirable though painful monitor teaching us to be sober-minded, and convincing us that this life has become penal in consequence of that outrageous wickedness which was perpetrated in Paradise, and that all to which the New Testament invites belongs to that future inheritance which awaits us in the world to come, and is offered for our acceptance, as the earnest that we may, in its own due time, obtain that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us walk in hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and so make progress from day to day. For "the Lord know eth them that are His;" [1524] and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God," [1525] but by grace, not by nature. For there is but one Son of God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God. For He, abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, that thereby He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of our infirmity, that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His righteousness and immortality, lose our own properties of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our nature perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought any one to trust that he has passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. " [1526]Now, such a war as this would have had no existence if human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued steadfast in the uprightness in which it was created. But now in its misery it makes war upon itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognize that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we should still have preferred to endure the hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our non-resistance, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its walls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen. In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles. She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener’s lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,—and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment. The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even she could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking. Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work; they talked of the friends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton’s engagements, and wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

• From The City of God

  147 Lecture 7 Transcript—Augustine’s Political Vision (Book 4) that purpose and allow the members of the community to live as they wish. That may sound innocuous but it evacuates states’ claims for a kind of moral legitimacy that marks them out as special from other groups. This is why Augustine famously affirms that kingdoms without justice are little more than large criminal gangs—in Latin, latrocinia: larcenies or rackets. I call this Augustine’s Married to the Mob moment. If you remember that movie, there’s a wonderful scene where Michelle Pfeiffer, the mob boss wife, says to the FBI man who’s trying to turn her, make her an informant for the FBI, and she says, “God, you people work just like the mob! There’s no difference.” And the FBI man replies, “Oh, there’s a big difference, Mrs. de Marco. The mob is run by murdering, thieving, lying, cheating psychopaths. We work for the President of the United States of America.” Augustine doesn’t mean simply that political structures are basically protection rackets, with those on top taking money out of the pockets of those weaker down the food chain—though of course he most definitely means at least that. But, more broadly, he means that you can understand both states and criminal gangs as working out a particular, not very pleasant, form of logic. They both have rationales, they both have interests, a logic to doing what they do, and the logics are not so dissimilar as those in either party want sometimes to suggest. Now, part of the logic that they possess is an appetitive logic, a logic about their appetites. Human communities are brought together by positive ends, by loves; even in their aversions, in fact, they are driven by cupidity, desire, lust—lust for wealth, for glory, for immortality, for power, for the status of gods. States and gangs both possess these lusts and are possessed by them, thus they both share a common formal structure. This is why Augustine’s example in Book 4, Chapter 4 of this encounter between Alexander the Great and the captured pirate is so telling.

• From The City of God

  481 Lecture 23—The City of God as a Single Book the essential nature of politics, his understanding of its origins, and its aspirations, all in the service of showing how Christians should and should not be political creatures. „Augustine has a clear sense of the nature of politics as a consequence of the Fall. We need something to coordinate our various passions and interests and at least loosely organize our fears because they do not naturally gain organization on their own. „But this practice of coordination is really only a restraining endeavor for disordered loves. As an essentially this-worldly project, it has no hope of achieving any permanent or stable goods. In this way, politics may be important as a site for reflection on the human condition and for revealing the configuration of our pathologies, but not as a vehicle to achieve our ends. „We must be constantly reminded that politics cannot be an ultimately consequential arena for achieving our genuine goods because politics is but one permutation of our deepest theological passions. In this way politics is wrapped up in theological longings, and indeed idolatry, from the very beginning. „Every political community courts what we might call the fusion of church and state. The human longing for God is not solitary, nor does it seek an individual end. We were created for a social communion, with one another and God, and even after the Fall, that longing for society has not departed; it has only warped into our various political passions. „Much of this point of view is captured in Augustine’s choice of the word “city” in his title and as his central operational concept of this work. And so we need Once we are untethered from God after the Fall, our affections keep flowing from us.

• From The City of God

  478 Books That Matter: The City of God But for us now, along with this turning outward to God in ecstatic praise, the other dimension of this eschatological life that’s worth considering is the absolute integrity it offers us—beyond the present tensions of flesh and spirit, beyond the current turbulence of distentio, beyond our experience of longing for these tensions to be relieved, these turbulences to subside. Consider the integrity that is promised herein to us. As a thought experiment, consider your attitude to remembering the past. So much of our past seems impossibly distant to us. Did we really live it at all? Is there really no way to go back? Why is time a one- way street? When you think like that, you might take some comfort in Augustine’s claim that eternity is being co-present to all moments of time. For if that is the case, each instant of your life is ultimately no less real than every other instant. This means that redemption when it happens, happens to every instant at the same time. It's not that the course of one’s life is a runway, and your soul lifts off, like an airplane, at the moment of death, but that the whole course of your life is gathered into God each and every moment. Death is something the self might experience, subjectively and in our fallenness, as a terminus, as an end, just as birth was an incipit, a beginning. But for God, a human life is a broken, fragmented, shattered, yet still single thing, alpha to omega. Since of this, when we miss the past, of 20 years ago or only yesterday, it does not mean that that past has fallen into oblivion, but that that past is waiting, just as we are now waiting, to be gathered into God. And from God's eternal perspective, all those moments are already so gathered; indeed, they always already have been, we always already have been. And so transfiguration and resurrection are also, on this account, things that happen to our whole selves, not just the final version or iteration of ourselves. There, at the end of time, you can say, we are waiting for ourselves, waiting to become, fully, finally, ultimately, the we that we were meant to be from the beginning, at last. The whole you—unimpeded, uninstructed, by the disjunctive and

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

  She pressed a button. “Daggett, we need you, hon.” “Thank you, Lila,” said Luna. “Your pleasure is my pleasure. Where is Daggett? He’s a little slower because he misses his cods. Oh, I should say: You’re going to have to let Jason hold your breasts, I think. He can’t make bowls without inspiration.” “I can live with that.” Daggett drove Luna in silence down a long curving path, past the lake. The wildflowers gave way to lilac and forsythia, and then there was a salt marsh, and then suddenly they were winding through deep silent woods, with mica chips of sunlight sparkling through the leaves. Finally they came to a clearing and a small well- kept shingled house, painted green. “I’ll leave you to it,” said Daggett with a wink. “Just give Lila a call when you want me to pick you up.” Luna knocked. A tall scruffy man in a leather apron came to the door. His hands were black with stain. His eyes had a crinkly honest look. “I heard you were on your way out here,” he said. “Did Lila tell you I make bowls?” “Yes, and she said I’d probably have to let you fondle my breasts, and I just want you to know I’m okay with that.” “Good. Well then, let’s do that first, shall we? You’ll have to help me clamp my hands. Can I get you some green tea before we get down to it? Or some home brew?” “Home brew would be good, thanks.” “Okay, well, why don’t you scoot your pants a little ways down for me.” “My pants?” “I think, yes. I need to experience curving shapes to make my bowls. What lovely hips.” He cupped her cameltoe for a moment. “Do you like to eat salad? I do.” Luna nodded, stepping out of her pants. “Turn around, please, so I can have a look at your—” “Panties, or no?” She turned. “Panties are fine. Oh, my. Don’t move. Bend forward just a little.” Jason walked across his studio and unhooked a very large salad bowl from the wall. He stood behind her and pressed the bowl around her ass. Then he leaned against the bowl, humping at it with his hips. Luna felt well and truly cupped. “Now that’s what I call a Cobb salad,” he said. Luna touched the smooth, perfect grain of the bowl. “This is lovely. Who inspired this?” “Oh, a woman Lila sent me a few months ago. Her name was Jackie. She tried out some of my dildos, and I made three huge bowls in her honor, and then of course she went on her way. Those were the last dildos I made. I make friends with women, and it’s nice, but they just don’t want to live out here in the woods with me. They want be in town.”

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

  She began moving her hand slowly, then faster. “Ooh boy, I want this dick inside me,” she said, “I want to be fucked by this dick, I can’t help it, it’s so perfect. It’s literally THE perfect dick for me.” She gave it a number of good quick pulls and then she noticed that Ruzty was quivering and trembling. Suddenly he said “Ohhhhhhrrrrr” in his beautiful accent, and several white glops spouted from the end. Immediately there was a buzzer and a ringing. “Uh-oh,” said Shandee. She blew Ruzty a kiss. “Bye-bye,” said Ruzty. An assistant named Krock appeared and led Shandee away. “Why in heaven’s name did you wank him off?” Krock asked. “I didn’t mean to. He begged me, and I obliged him.” “Did you take off your sponge gloves?” Shandee nodded. “We had a rapport. I’m sorry.” Krock reassured her. “I think it’ll be okay. Lila will give you your reassignment tomorrow.” “Is there any chance that I’ll be able to see him again?” “You never know,” said Krock. He gave her a sly look. “I’ll put in a good word for you.” “Thanks.” Shandee shook her head wistfully. “I really wanted that cock of his so bad. God, I still do. I can’t stop thinking about it. I had to hold it. I’d give that cock everything.” “I wish people said that about my cock,” said Krock, as they reached the lobby of Shandee’s hotel. “I’m sure it’s nice,” said Shandee. “Do you want to see it?” “Um—” Shandee checked the wall clock. “No, thanks. Dave’s arm is going to be needing his meal.” [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Rhumpa Unbuttons Her Shirt [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Rhumpa was her name, and, yes, she paid a visit to the House of Holes. The people she was staying with in New Haven were wealthy and under-read. Although they were middle-aged, their minds were very young and she couldn’t take them seriously. She saw a pepper grinder in the middle of the table, and while they talked about the price of tires she unscrewed the little knob on the top, and when it came off she lifted the wooden part off the central spindly thing and looked inside, where she could see in the shadows of peppercorns. She thought, The peppercorns are waiting to be ground up. They’re still round, like little dry planets, but not for long. Rhumpa held the machine to her nose and smelled the distant sharpness of the pepper, which made her smile. And then the pepper grinder got bigger and she jumped down into it and fell through tumbling peppercorns, and she smelled a hundred dinner parties of the past.

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

  The beach curved back into a small bay where the House of Holes condominiums were, and as Cardell turned the corner he saw a distant figure wearing a hat. He increased his pace, still stepping in her footsteps. With each step he took, he learned more about the arch of her foot, the ball of her foot, and her small, strong toes. He was almost loping now. Finally, he caught up to her. She was wearing a loose, faded dress and a hat, and she held her sandals hooked on her fingers. Her hat was woven of pale fine straw and made her face glow like a classy tangerine. He recognized her. “Hi, I bought the pen,” he said. “Oh, good,” said Betsy. “I’ve been walking in your footsteps,” he said. “It was the most intimate experience. Did you feel my feet pressing against your feet?” “I’m not sure,” she said. “Let me try walking in your footsteps, and you can see what you feel.” “Okay.” Cardell walked a few paces ahead and stopped. “Don’t turn around,” she said. He didn’t. She walked up to him. “Did you feel the ball of my foot pressing into your footprint?” she asked. “Some,” he said. “More I felt the arch. But yes, I feel I know you better now.” “And I know you better. We’re old friends, in fact.” Cardell paused, full of indecision. “But we’re very different.” “That’s true. I collect beach glass, and you don’t.” “You seem rich.” “I’m not poor. My husband’s father was rich. He was sup-posedly a ruthless businessman, but he was always nice to me.” She smiled. “I’d love to see you come,” Cardell said thickly. She laughed. “Ah, but I’m married, as you know. I don’t cheat. Much.” “Does your husband have a friendly sex organ that treats you well?” he asked. “He does,” she said, in a distant voice. “It’s got a knobby end that fits me just right. But I suppose that’s private information.” Cardell looked out at the ocean. “I wish I had a cold iced tea right now.” Betsy’s voice was very small. “I have cold Snapple in my condo, if you want to come back.” So they went back to her condo where there was a tall vase filled with carved canes and a Chinese ceramic pig on a side table, its head resting on a red pillow. There were also many jars of shells and beach glass. Betsy pulled the sliding door half open so that they could still hear the sound of the sea. “My husband is at his office,” she said after a moment. “I—I can call him. Should I?” “Absolutely, yes, give him a call.” She flipped out her cell phone. “Honey,” she said, “I’ve met a nice-looking young man on the beach who says he wants to watch me come.” She paused. “I know. I know. Okay. I know. Okay.” She held the phone away from her ear. Cardell raised his eyebrows questioningly.

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

  “Dave, please help me come,” she said. “Please fuck the banana in me.” Dave moved it and jiggled it, and she circled her fingers one way and then the other over her crimson clit. She started to come with her legs and her hips, and she smashed herself down on Dave’s banana fist and ground into it and said, “Grrrr,” and watched herself in the mirror humping on the corner of the bed. As her orgasm found its way up her legs, her whole body went clong, clong, clong. “Oh, that’s it, Dave,” she said. But in her mind she was thinking, Ruzty, Ruzty, I love your eyes and face, and I wish you could see me coming. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Cardell Has a Sherry Cobbler [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Cardell worked at the planning office of a small city, planning brick crosswalks and trying to figure out where people could park. It was interesting work, but he wanted to meet a nice, smart, sexy woman, so he went to a lecture on the history of the municipal water supply and sat down on a folding chair next to a woman with mustard-colored stockings. There was a good crowd, but unfortunately the lecturer had a boring singsong voice. Cardell’s assbones hurt from sitting and his mind was aswirl with obscene imagery, cocks being stuffed everywhere, women’s eyes suddenly going wide in surprise. He began to think more and more about the woman next to him. He liked her mustard-colored knees poking out from the hem of her skirt. She had a little notebook and she was drawing a picture of a cocktail glass. Below that, she’d written “He doesn’t know anything” and underlined it twice. When the audience questions began, Cardell leaned toward her and asked her to the roof bar of a nearby hotel. “I noticed your doodle,” he said, in his thrummiest voice. “You naughty man,” she said. She gave him a speedy once-over and made a single nod. They left as unobtrusively as possible. Turned out her name was Jackie. She sat on a dark-red bar stool and addressed the bartender. “Can you make a sherry cobbler?” she asked. He nodded, sure. “I’ll take one, too,” Cardell said impulsively. He turned back to Jackie. “What’s a sherry cobbler?” “It’s my life’s work,” said Jackie, and moved an eyebrow provocatively. She told Cardell where she taught, and they talked about a big video store near there that had closed recently. “Rented a lot of movies there, back in the day,” said Cardell, closing his eyes in nostalgic reminiscence. “Before everything streamed.” The drinks came, with straws poking out. Cardell took three enormous sips and nodded, blinking and smacking his lips. The drink was incredibly sweet and strong. And good. “So that’s a sherry cobbler,” he said. “Not particularly subtle—but then, who needs subtle?” Jackie sucked hers down greedily. “Damn delicious. I never tire of it. Would you like me to tell you the history of the sherry cobbler?”

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

  He squeezed her very hard to him and breathed in her hair and shuddered out everything he had into her. “I give you everything,” he said. Later in the shower, Henriette remembered this and got on her knees and said, “Oh, Ruzty, oh, Ruzty,” and came. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Dune Tells Mindy How He Lost His Penis [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Mindy, the documentary filmmaker, was standing in her room at the House of Holes Hotel, working on a jigsaw puzzle of marbles in a bowl and listening to “32 Flavors” by Ani DiFranco. There was a knock on her door. She opened it and saw a long-haired, dark-eyed man standing in the hallway, wearing a fringed suede jacket. He was wildly handsome, and he smelled like old cigarettes. “Hey, I’m Dune,” he said. “They took away my penis, and I wonder if you can help me.” “If I can I will,” said Mindy. “What happened?” “Well, they did a switcheroo on me,” Dune said. “I’ve got a vagina now, and it’s a hot one, but every day of my life I want my own tackle back. You’re Mindy, am I correct?” “I am,” said Mindy. “Would you mind if I set up a video camera and got your story? I’m making a film about this place.” “That’s what I heard.” Mindy kicked the tripod mounts out and got her camera running. “Should I sit here?” Dune sat down heavily. “Hoo, I’m wiped.” “Would you like something to eat? I could make you an omelet.” “I’d love an omelet,” said Dune. “I’ve been flying a pornsucker around Providence, Rhode Island and I ache all over, and frankly I need the attention of a good woman.” Mindy cooked him a three-egg omelet and he ate it. “That was fine food,” he said. “What’s your secret?” “Butter and salt.” “So simple. Butter and salt. I’ll be fried.” Mindy cleared the plate away and clipped a microphone to Dune’s lapel. “So how exactly did you lose your penis?” Dune told Mindy all about when he lost control on the midway and stuck his pinky into Shandee’s pussy. Mindy, nodding encouragingly, checked the sound levels to be sure she was getting all of it. “So then I went to Lila and she said, ‘Okay for you, Mr. Pussyfinger,’ and she called in this woman who said she needed her own penis and a pair of balls—the whole desk set. She got what she wanted, from me.” Dune looked down and laughed sadly. “Ah, Mindy, you don’t want to hear my problems. I’m just broke, and I don’t have money for smokes.” Mindy brightened. “I have a couple of those little Winchester cigars in my purse for emergencies, hold on,” she said. “I just quit smoking, that’s why I’m doing this jigsaw puzzle.” “Thanks.” Dune lit the cigar and took a long squinty drag. “Hm, a nice little Winchester. My dad smoked Winchesters. ‘A whole nother smoke.’ ”

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

  “I know. Get yourself all filled with oxygen and nitrogen and helium and all the other special components of the air that will allow you to breathe out the best come you ever had right in your own bedroom, this afternoon. See you, bye.” He squeezed her arm and ducked through the hedgerow. [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SW.jpg] Dune Visits the Midway [image "decoration" file=image_rsrc2SX.jpg] Shandee was standing up on a balcony on the midway, shaking her hips self-promotingly. She had white boots on and a small green cloth of Ka-Chiang hanging like a flag from her pussyhole. Out in front Krock was calling, “Forty to slap the pretty ass, sixty to spank it. Forty to slap, sixty to spank.” Dune, strolling by, saw Shandee and immediately got in line for her. He paid and was given a pair of blue quilted oven mitts. “I’m going to slap that girl’s happy ass,” announced the man in line in front of him. It was a long wait, in through a red door and around a series of small turns that led through a maze of plywood baffles painted black. Finally, Dune reached a small private room with a velvet curtain in it. Shandee was there—or part of her was. He couldn’t see her face or upper body because she was leaning forward through a hole in the curtain that went around her waist; only her legs and bottom and pussy hanky were visible. Dune sat down and said to himself, Will anything ever look as good to me as this girl’s wineglass shape looks to me right now? Probably not. “Shandee, baby,” he called quietly. “It’s me, Dune. How goes the search for your one-armed mystery man?” Shandee’s voice came muffled from the other side of the curtain. “No luck yet,” she said. “Lila wants me out working on the midway while Dave sows his oats. She says I have to wait because Dave has a superlarge penis and he needs a little more time with it before he has to give it up.” “Too bad for him, he’s missing out on you,” said Dune. “Have you been going with anyone else?” There was a thoughtful silence, then Shandee said, “Ruzty’s paid a few calls.” “That sweet smiley kid with the accent?” Shandee sighed. “It’s embarrassing because whenever we finally get down to a little kissing, Dave’s arm starts thrashing in his bag like a bad puppy. I put him in a drawer, but he starts thumping to get out.” “I can sympathize,” said Dune, lightly stroking the back of Shandee’s knee with his oven mitt. “You’re so damn pretty I can barely swallow my own spit. And I can only see the lower half of you.” “That’s sweet. Have you been well?”

• From The City of God

  355 Lecture 17—Augustine’s Scriptural History (Books 15–17) › While the first example diminishes the text, the second amplifies it; both tactics serve the strategic aim of showing his audience how the Bible can offer a moral and spiritual frame within which past and present and future should be understood. „Such a typological imagination creates a certain kind of self. It is not simply informative; it is also quite powerfully formative. To experience the meaning of time in this way is to feel how we are divided: We’re never fully here, but always caught up in various historical moments. „The word Augustine uses for this experience is distentio, an experience of being stretched out across time. Feeling it is meant to make us feel more pointedly our need for reintegration and more vividly to seek God’s help. „Seeking God’s help is why this experience of reading is so integral to the formation of the Christian community in general. The church’s fundamental activity, along with praising God, is to call upon God for help. Far from being simply a way of talking about the past, Augustine’s method is a profound strategy for forming the Christian self. „Augustine’s proposal for reading history and for seeing one’s whole life as a practice of reading is a powerful one—both psychologically and historically. It has been tremendously influential in Christian practice, and stands behind the continued insistence among the churches of the West that the Bible is Augustine is important not because he is innovative, but because his deployment of this strategy becomes the prototype for all other uses of it in the West.