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 Henry and June (1986)

  Today I can’t work because yesterday’s feelings lie ready to pounce on me out of the softness of the garden. They are in the air, in the smells, in the sun, on myself, like the clothes I wear. It is too much to love this way. I need him near me every moment—more than near, inside of me. I hate June, and yet there is her beauty. June and I melted together, as it should be. Henry must have both. I want both, too. And June? June wants everything; because her beauty demands it. June, take everything from me but not Henry. Leave me Henry. He is not necessary to you. You do not love him as I do today. You can love many men. I will love only a few. For me, Henry is rare. I am giving Henry the courage to dominate and dazzle June. He is filling himself with the strength my love gives him. Every day I say I cannot love him more, and every day I find more love in me for him. Heinrich, another beautiful day with you is finished, always too early. And I am not empty of love yet. I loved you as you sat yesterday with the light on your gray-blond hair, the warm blood showing through your Nordic skin. Your mouth open, so sensual. Your shirt open. In your stocky hands you held your father’s letter. I think of your childhood in the streets, your serious adolescence—but always sensual—many books. You know how tailors sit like Arabs over their work. You learned to cut out a pair of pants when you were five years old. You wrote your first book during a two weeks’ vacation. You played jazz on the piano for the grownups to dance to. You were sometimes sent to get your father, who was drinking in a bar. You could slip under the swinging doors, you were so small. You tugged at his coat. You drank beer. You abhor kissing a woman’s hand. You laugh at it. You look so fine in all your cast-off suits, shabby clothes. I know your body now. I know what deviltries you are capable of. You are something to me that I never read in your writings or heard about from June or your friends. Everybody thinks of the noise and the power of you. But I have heard and felt the softness. There are words in other tongues I must use when I talk about you. In my own, I think of: ardiente, salvaje, hombre. I want to be there wherever you are. Lying next to you even if you are asleep. Henry, kiss my eyelashes, put your fingers on my eyelids. Bite my ear. Push back my hair. I have learned to unbutton you so swiftly. All, in my mouth, sucking. Your fingers. The hotness. The frenzy. Our cries of satisfaction.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘Oh, I’m just about as done for as that old creature. ... Quick, quick, child, run off after your youth! Only a small piece of it has been snipped off by ageing women: all the rest is there for you and the girl who is waiting for you. You’ve now had a taste of youth! It never satisfies, but one always goes back for more. Oh, you had started to make comparisons before last night. ... And what am I up to now, doling out all this advice and displaying the greatness of my soul! What do I know of you two? She loves you: it’s her turn to tremble; but her misery will come from passion and not from perverted mother-love. And you will talk to her like a master, not capriciously, like a gigolo. Quick, quick, run off. She spoke in tones of hasty supplication. He listened, standing planted before her, his chest bare, his hair tempestuous: and so alluring, that she had to clasp her hands to prevent their seizing hold of him. He guessed this, perhaps, and did not move away. For an instant they shared a lunatic hope - do people feel like this in mid-air when falling from a tower? — then the hope vanished. ‘Go,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I love you. It’s too late. Go away. But go away at once. Get dressed! ’ She rose and fetched him his shoes, spread out his crumpled shirt and his socks. He stood helpless, moving his fingers awkwardly as if they were numb. She had to find his braces and his tie; but she was careful not to go too close to him and offered him no further help. While he was dressing, she glanced into the courtyard several times, as if she were expecting a carriage at the door. He looked even paler when he was dressed, and a halo of fatigue round his eyes made them seem larger. ‘You don’t feel ill? ’ she asked him. And she added timidly, lowering her eyes, ‘You could always lie down for a little.’ But at once she pulled herself together and came over to him, as though he were in great danger. ‘No, no, you’ll be better at home. Hurry, it’s not yet midday; a good hot bath will soon put you to rights, and then the fresh air ... Here are your gloves. ... Your hat? On the floor, of course. Put your coat on, there’s a nip in the air. Au revoir, my Cheri, au revoir. That’s right. And tell Charlotte that...’ She closed the door behind him, and silence put an end to her vain and desperate words. She heard Cheri stumble on the staircase and she ran to the window. He was going down the front steps and then he stopped in the middle of the courtyard. ‘He’s coming back I He’s coming back!’ she cried, raising her arms.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  ‘We all know that,’ he said harshly. T don’t give a damn — d’you hear me? — I don’t give a single damn that I wasn’t your first lover. What I should have liked, or rather what would have been ... fitting ... decent ... is to be your last.’ With a twist of his shoulders, he shrugged off her superb arms. ‘After all, what I am saying to you now is for your own good.’ ‘I understand perfectly. You think only of me. I think only of your fiancee. That’s all very nice, all very natural. It’s clear that we both have hearts of gold/ She rose, waiting for some outrageous rejoinder. But he said nothing, and it hurt her to see for the first time a look of discouragement on his face. She bent over and put her hands under his armpits. ‘Now then, come along, get your clothes on. I’ve only to put on my dress, I’m ready underneath, and -what in the world is there to do on a day like this except to go to Schwabe and choose a pearl for you? You see, I must give you a wedding present.’ He jumped up, his face aglow: * Top-hole 1 A pearl for my shirtfront ! A pale pink pearl. I know the very one!’ 'Not on your life! A white one, something masculine for pity’s sake! Don’t tell me, I know which one just as well as you. It’ll ruin me, as usual. However, think of the money I’m going to save when you’re out of the way!’ Cheri adopted a more reticent attitude. ' Oh, that... that depends on my successor.’ Lea turned back at the door of her boudoir and gave him her gayest smile, showing her strong teeth and the fresh blue of her eyes skilfully darkened by bistre. 'Your successor? A couple of francs and a packet of cigarettes! And a glass of cassis on Sunday — that’s all the job will be worth! And I’ll settle money on your children.’ They both became extremely gay for the next few weeks. Cheri’s official duties as a fiance separated them for a few hours each day, sometimes for a night or two. ‘We mustn’t let them lose confidence,’ Cheri declared. Lea, kept by Madame Peloux at a safe distance from Neuilly, satisfied her curiosity by plying Cheri with a hundred questions. Whenever he came back to Lea’s house, he was full of his own importance and heavy with secrets which he at once divulged. He was like a schoolboy playing truant. ‘Oh, my sainted aunt!’ he shouted one day, cramming his hat down on Lea’s portrait-bust. * The goings-on at the Peloux Palace H6tel ever since yesterday! ’ She began by scolding him, laughing already in anticipation. ‘Take your hat off that, in the first place. And in the second, don’t invoke your wretched aunt in my house. Well, what’s been happening now?’

• From Henry and June (1986)

  He closes the door, and our talk melts into caresses, into deft, acute core-reaching fucking. The talk is about Proust, and it brings this confession from Henry. “To be entirely honest with myself I like to be away from June. It is then I enjoy her best. When she is here I am morbid, oppressed, desperate. With you—well, you are light. I am satiated with experiences and pain. Perhaps I torment you. I don’t know. Do I?” I can’t answer that very well, though it is clear to me that he is darkness to me. And why? Because of the instincts he has aroused in me? The word “satiation” terrified me. It seemed like the first drop of poison poured into me. Against his satiation, I match my fearful freshness, the newness in me, which gives intensity to what for him may be of less value. That first drop of poison, poured so accidentally, was like a foretelling of death. I don’t know through what crevice our love will suddenly seep out and spend itself. Henry, today I am sad for the moments I am missing, those moments when you talk with Fred until dawn, when you are eloquent or brilliant or violent or exultant. And I was sad that you missed a wonderful moment in me. Last night I was sitting by the fire and talking as I rarely talk, dazzling Hugo, feeling immensely and astonishingly rich, pouring out stories and ideas which would have amused you. It was about lies, the different kinds of lies, the special lies I tell for specific reasons, to improve on living. One time when Eduardo was being overanalytical I poured out the story of my imaginary Russian lover. He was in rapture. And by it I conveyed to him the necessity of folly, the richness in emotion which he lacks, because he is emotionally impuissant. When I am sorely in trouble, perplexed, lost, I invent the acquaintance of a wise old man with whom I converse. I tell everybody about him, how he looks, what he said, his effect on me (someone to lean on for a moment), and by the end of the day I feel strengthened by my experience with the wise old man, and as satisfied as if it were all true. I have also invented friends when the ones I had were not satisfying. And how I enjoy my experiences! How they fill me, add to me. Embroidery. Today I meet Fred, and as we walk towards Trinité together the sun comes out of a rain cloud and blinds us. And I begin quoting from his writing about a sunny morning in the market, which touches him. He has told me I am good for Henry, that I give him things June couldn’t give him. And yet he admits that Henry is entirely in June’s power when she is there. June is stronger. I am growing to love Henry more than June.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I remember one evening I had waited for Jessie and she never came and just before going to bed, I went up into the bow of the ship where one was alone with the sea and sky, and swore to myself this great oath, as I called it in my romantic fancy: whatever I undertook to do, I would do it to the uttermost in me. If I have had any success in life or done any good work, it is due in great part to that resolution. I could not keep my thoughts from Jessie; if I tried to put her out of my head, I’d either get a little note from her, or Ponsonby would come begging me to leave him the cabin the whole day: at length in despair I begged her for her address in New York, for I feared to lose her forever in that maelstrom. I added that I would always be in my cabin and alone from one to half past if she could ever come. That day she didn’t come, and the old gentleman who said he would adopt me, got hold of me, told me he was a banker and would send me to Harvard, the University near Boston; from what the Doctor had said of me, he hoped I would do great things. He was really kind and tried to be sympathetic, but he had no idea that what I wanted chiefly was to prove myself, to justify my own high opinion of my powers in the open fight of life. I didn’t want help and I absolutely resented his protective airs. Next day in the cabin came a touch on the door and Jessie all flustered was in my arms. “I can only stay a minute”, she cried, “Father is dreadful, says you are only a child and won’t have me engage myself and he watches me from morning to night, I could only get away now because he had to go down to the machine-room.” Before she had finished, I had locked the cabin door. “Oh, I must go”, she cried, “I must really; I only came to give you my address in New York, here it is”, and she handed me the paper that I put at once in my pocket. And then I put both my arms under her clothes and my hands were on her warm hips, and I was speechless with delight; in a moment my right hand came round in front and as I touched her sex our lips clung together and her sex opened at once, and my finger began to caress her and we kissed and kissed again. Suddenly her lips got hot and while I was still wondering why, her sex got wet and her eyes began to flutter and turn up. A moment or two later she tried to get out of my embrace.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Kate laughed and just then a knock came to the door. “Come in!” I cried and the colored maid came in with a note: “a lady’s just been and left it”, said Jenny. I saw it was from Mrs. Mayhew, so I crammed it into my pocket saying regretfully: “I must answer it soon.” Kate excused herself and after a long, long kiss went to prepare supper while I read Mrs. Mayhew’s note, which was short if not exactly sweet. “Eight days and no Frank, and no news; you cannot want to kill me: come today if possible. Lorna.” I replied at once, saying I would come on the morrow, that I was installing Smith in my boardinghouse and was so busy I didn’t know where to turn, but would be with her sure on the morrow and I signed “Your Frank.” That afternoon at five o’clock Smith came and I helped to arrange his books and make him comfy. * * * MY FIRST VENUS. Venus toute entiére à sa proie attachèe. Chapter XI. I meant to write nothing but the truth in these pages; yet now I’m conscious that my memory has played a trick on me: it is an artist in what painters call foreshortening: events, that is, which took months to happen, it crushes together into days, passing, so to speak, from mountain top to mountain top of feeling, and so the effect of passion is heightened by the partial elimination of time. I can do nothing more than warn my readers that in reality some of the love-passages I shall describe were separated by weeks and sometimes by months, that the nuggets of gold were occasional “finds” in a desert. After all, it cannot matter to my “gentle readers” and my good readers will have already divined the fact, that when you crush eighteen years into nine chapters, you must leave out all sorts of minor happenings while recording chiefly the important—fortunately these carry the message. It was with my knowledge as with my passions: day after day I worked feverishly: whenever I met a passage such as the building of the bridge in Caesar, I refused to burden my memory with the dozens of new words because I thought, and still think, Latin comparatively unimportant: the nearest to a great man the Latins ever produced being Tacitus or Lucretius. No sensible person would take the trouble to master a language in order to gain acquaintance with the second-rate. But new words in Greek were precious to me like new words in English and I used to memorize every passage studded with them save choruses like that of the birds in Aristophanes, where he names birds unfamiliar to me in life. Smith, I found, knew all such words in both languages. I asked him one day and he admitted that he had read everything in ancient Greek, following the example of Hermann, the famous German scholar, and believed he knew almost every word.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I could give you supper,” she added, “my lips too, that long for you and—and—but you know” she added regretfully, “he might come in and I want to know you better first before seeing you together: a young God and a man!—and the man in God’s likeness, yet so poor an imitation!” “Don’t, don’t,” I said, “you’ll make life harder for yourself—” “Harder” she repeated with a sniff of contempt, “Kiss me, my love and go if you must. Shall I see you tomorrow? There!” she cried as with a curse, “I’ve given myself away: I can’t help it, oh how I want you always: how I shall long for you and count the dull dreary hours! Go, go or I’ll never let you”—and she kissed and clung to me to the door. “Sweet—tomorrow”, I said and tore off. Of course it is manifest that my liaison with Mrs. Mayhew had little or nothing to do with love. It was demoniac youthful sex-urge in me and much the same hunger in her and as soon as the desire was satisfied my judgment of her was as impartial, cool as if she had always been indifferent to me. But with her I think there was a certain attachment and considerable tenderness. In intimate relations between the sexes it is rare indeed that the man gives as much to love as the woman. Professor Byron. C. Smith: 1872. * * * SOME STUDY, MORE LOVE. Chapter X. Supper at the Gregory’s was almost over when I entered the dining-room: Kate and her mother and father and the boy Tommy were seated at the end of the table, taking their meal: the dozen guests had all finished and disappeared. Mrs. Gregory hastened to rise and Kate got up to follow her mother into the neighbouring kitchen. “Please don’t get up!” I cried to the girl, “I’d never forgive myself for interrupting you: I’ll wait on myself or on you”, I added smiling, “if you wish anything—” She looked at me with hard, indifferent eyes and sniffed scornfully: “If you’ll sit there”, she said, pointing to the other end of the table, “I’ll bring you supper: do you take coffee or tea?” “Coffee, please,” I answered and took the seat indicated, at once making up my mind to be cold to her while winning the others. Soon the boy began asking me had I ever seen any Indians—“in warpaint and armed, I mean” he added eagerly. “Yes and shot at them, too”, I replied smiling. Tommy’s eyes gleamed—“Oh tell us!” he panted and I knew I could always count on one good listener! “I’ve lots to tell, Tommy,” I said, “but now I must eat my supper at express rate or your sister’ll be angry—” I added as Kate came in with some steaming food: she pulled a face and shrugged her shoulders with contempt. “Where do you preach?” I asked the grey-haired father, “my brother says you’re really eloquent—”

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I begin to see the preciousness of what Henry and I feel for each other, of what it is he gives me that he has not given June. I begin to understand Allendy’s thoughtful smile when I depreciate tender love, friendship. What he does not know is that I must complete the unfulfilled portions of my life, that I must have what I have missed so far, to complete myself and my own story. But I cannot enjoy sexuality for its own sake, independent of my feelings. I am inherently faithful to the man who possesses me. Now it is a whole faithfulness to Henry. I tried to enjoy Hugo today, to please him, and I couldn’t. I had to pretend. If there were no June in the world today, I could know the end of my restlessness. I awoke one morning crying. Henry had said to me, “I really take no pleasure in your body. It isn’t your body I love.” And the sorrowfulness of that moment comes back. Yet, the last time we were together he had said wild things about the beauty of my legs and of my knowing so well how to fuck. Poor woman! Both Hugo and Henry like to watch my face when they make love to me. But now, for Hugo, my face is a mask. Allendy told Hugo at the concert that I was a very interesting subject, that I responded so sensitively and quickly. That I was almost cured. But that evening I again had the sensation of wanting to dazzle Allendy, while concealing some secret part of my real self. There must always be something secret. From Henry I conceal the fact that I rarely get ultimate sexual satisfaction because he likes my legs wide open, and I need to close them. I don’t want to diminish his pleasure. Besides, I get a kind of disseminated pleasure which, even if it is less keen, lasts longer than an orgasm. Henry wrote me a letter after the concert. I put it under my pillow last night: “Anaïs, I was dazzled by your beauty! I lost my head, I felt wretched. I have been blind, blind, I said to myself. You stood there like a Princess. You were the Infanta! You looked thoroughly disappointed in me. What was the matter? Did I look stupid? I probably was. I wanted to get down on my knees and kiss the hem of your dress. So many Anaïses you have shown me—and now this one!—as if to prove your Protean versatility. Do you know what Fraenkel said to me? ‘I never expected to see a woman as beautiful as that. How can a woman of such femininity, such beauty, write a book [on D. H. Lawrence]?’

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  121 16. Elizabeth Ann Seton: Convert and Caretaker Elizabeth’s Conversion and Charity Work Elizabeth and her daughter went to live with the Filicchi family. It was the Filicchis who, seeing Elizabeth’s piety and charisma, believed she could be a light for the nascent Catholic Church in America—if she could be convinced to convert. It was the humble parish church in Livorno that inspired Elizabeth. She had a strong emotional reaction to the moment of transubstantiation, when Catholics believe the Eucharist is transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Having been taught all her life the Protestant doctrine that the moment is symbolic rather than literal, she was fascinated by the idea of such extraordinary access to the divine and the community unity she perceived around the mass. She was also increasingly drawn to the Virgin Mary, whose veneration was not as strong in the Episcopalian tradition she had grown up in. Back in New York, Elizabeth lived on one f loor of a small home outside of town, taking in boarders downstairs. For several years, she agonized over the question of conversion. She was open about her spiritual struggles, and her family worried that the Filicchis had preyed on her grief and loneliness. To support her children, she was reluctantly persuaded to partner with a couple who planned to open a school, though the work did not interest her. Finally, her decision to convert came to her through an emotional revelation: She attended a service at Trinity and felt a strong aversion to the symbolic Eucharist that was offered. An enthusiastic convert, she refashioned her life around her new faith. Her family rented small rooms near the Catholic parish, St. Peter’s, so that she could go to mass every morning and twice on Sundays. Plans for the school were in disarray when her partners pulled out, and she turned to quietly evangelizing the young Setons who attended her prayer circle. Elizabeth turned to a Baltimore priest, Louis William Dubourg, who was in New York raising funds for a new Catholic school. He convinced her to join him in Baltimore and open a school for girls. Baltimore was then the center of Catholic life in the young United States, and many of the

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I saw them into the omnibus and got kind words from all the party, even from Señor Arriga, but cherished most her look and word as she went out of the door. Holding it open for her, I murmured as she passed, for the others were within hearing: “I shall come soon.” The girl stopped, at once, pretending to look at the tag on a trunk the porter was carrying. “El Paso is far away,” she sighed, “and the hacienda ten leagues further on. When shall we arrive—when?” she added glancing up at me. “When?” was the significant word to me for many a month; her eyes had filled it with meaning. I’ve told of this meeting with Miss Vidal at length, because it marked an epoch in my life; it was the first time that love had cast her glamor over me making beauty superlative, intoxicating. The passion rendered it easier for me to resist ordinary temptation, for it taught me there was a whole gorgeous world in Love’s Kingdom that I had never imagined, much less explored. I had scarcely a lewd thought of Gloria. It was not till I saw her bared shoulders in evening dress that I stripped her in imagination and went almost wild in uncontrollable desire. Would she ever kiss me? What was she like undressed? My imagination was still untutored: I could picture her breasts better than her sex and I made up my mind to examine the next girl I was lucky enough to see naked, much more precisely. At the back of my mind was the fixed resolve to get to Chihuahua somehow or other in the near future and meet my charmer again and that resolve in due course shaped my life anew. In early June, that year, three strangers came to the Hotel, all cattlemen I was told, but of a new sort: Reece and Dell and Ford, the “Boss”, as he was called. Reece was a tall dark Englishman or rather Welshman, always dressed in brown leather riding boots, Bedford Cord breeches and dark tweed cutaway coat: he looked a prosperous gentleman farmer; Dell was almost a copy of him in clothes, about middle height and sturdier—in fact an ordinary Englishman. The Boss was fully six feet, taller even than Reece with a hatchet-thin, bronzed face and eagle profile—evidently a Western cattle-man from head to foot. The headwaiter told me about them and as soon as I saw them I had them transferred to a shady-cool table and saw that they were well waited on.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  The flowers of the moon, the broad-backed palms of jungle growth, the baying of blood-hounds, the frail white body of a child, the lava bubbles, the rallentando of the snow-flakes, the floorless bottom where smoke blooms into flesh. And what is flesh but moon? and what is moon but night? Night is longing, longing, longing, beyond all endurance. “Think of us! ” she said that night when she turned and flew up the steps rapidly. And it was as if I could think of nothing else. We two and the stairs ascending infinitely. Then “contradictory stairs”: the stairs in my father’s office, the stairs leading to crime, to madness, to the portals of invention. How could I think of anything else? Creation . To create the legend in which I could fit the key which would open her soul. A woman trying to deliver her secret. A desperate woman, seeking through love to unite herself with herself. Before the immensity of mystery one stands like a centipede that feels the ground slipping beneath its feet. Every door that opens leads to a greater void. One must swim like a star in the trackless ocean of time. One must have the patience of radium buried beneath a Himalayan peak. It is about twenty years now since I began the study of the photogenic soul; in that time I have conducted hundreds of experiments. The result is that I know a little more—about myself. I think it must be very much the same with the political leader or the military genius. One discovers nothing about the secrets of the universe; at the best one learns something about the nature of destiny. In the beginning one wants to approach every problem directly. The more direct and insistent the approach, the more quickly and surely one succeeds in getting caught in the web. No one is more helpless than the heroic individual. And no one can produce more tragedy and confusion than such a type. Flashing his sword above the Gordian knot, he promises speedy deliverance. A delusion which ends in an ocean of blood. The creative artist has something in common with the hero. Though functioning on another plane, he too believes that he has solutions to offer. He gives his life to accomplish imaginary triumphs. At the conclusion of every grand experiment, whether by statesman, warrior, poet or philosopher, the problems of life present the same enigmatic complexion. The happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those which have a history, those which have made history, seem only to have emphasized through their accomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too, eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content merely to live and to enjoy.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Your big questions might look different than mine, just as your shit pickles may look different than mine. Nevertheless, our existential longing becomes more urgent when life falls apart or when death or grief come knocking. And yet, faith is something many of us struggle with, myself included. But as someone who’s had serious doubts about trusting an invisible force, I’ve also had moments of clear knowing. For example, after my grandpa passed, I remember trying to piece together what happens when we die. I imagined that death was like a hidden room inside our house. The people we lost were still close to us in that room, we just couldn’t access them with our five senses. I didn’t fear death, because I was confident that it wasn’t final. I missed Grandpa. I missed my cat. But I knew that I’d see them again. And that one day, I’d be able to access that room. Unbeknownst to me at the time, in the 1910 sermon delivered after King Edward VII died, an Oxford divinity scholar named Henry Scott Holland declared: Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. . . . There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again! It strikes me as a bit uncanny that I’d randomly come up with this idea, not aware that 62 years before my birth, when I was mere stardust, a random guy, across time and space, would float the same idea. Me in my bedroom surrounded by my stuffed animals, him addressing a congregation. Maybe there’s something to this hidden room theory. This felt like a sturdier explanation than what my grandma, who modeled a very eclectic kind of spirituality, might have taught me. One minute we were lighting candles and praying the rosary, the next we were writing down names of people who pissed us off and putting them in the freezer “to ice them out.” In second grade, she told me about hexes, and I remember trying to practice using them on the mean girls at school. My spells must have backfired, because everyone got boobs before me.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One more incident belongs in this thirteenth year, and is worthy perhaps of record. Freed of the bullying and senseless cruelty of the older boys who for the most part, still siding with Jones, left me severely alone, the restraints of school life began to irk me. “If I were free”, I said to myself, “I’d go after E… or some other girl and have a great time; as it is, I can do nothing, hope for nothing.” Life was stale, flat and unprofitable to me. Besides, I had read nearly all the books I thought worth reading in the school library, and time hung heavy on my hands: I began to long for liberty as a caged bird. What was the quickest way out? I knew that my father as a Captain in the Navy could give me or get me a nomination so that I might become a Midshipman. Of course I’d have to be examined before I was fourteen; but I knew I could win a high place in any test. The summer vacation after I was thirteen on the 14th of February I spent at home in Ireland as I have told, and from time to time, bothered my father to get me the nomination. He promised he would, and I took his promise seriously. All the autumn I studied carefully the subjects I was to be examined in and from time to time wrote to my father reminding him of his promise. But he seemed unwilling to touch on the matter in his letters which were mostly filled with Biblical exhortations, that sickened me with contempt for his brainless credulity. My unbelief made me feel immeasurably superior to him. Christmas came and I wrote him a serious letter, insisting that he should keep his promise. For the first time in my life I flattered him, saying that I knew his word was sacred: but the time-limit was at hand and I was getting nervous lest some official delay might make me pass the prescribed limit of age. I got no reply: I wrote to Vernon who said he would do his best with the Governor. The days went on, the 14th of February came and went: I was fourteen. That way of escape into the wide world was closed to me by my father. I raged in hatred of him.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  We desire each other. But it’s a mirage. It’s only because we are so young, and it is summer, and we are walking body against body. Hugo is coming to take me home, and so Eduardo and I kiss, and that is all. At Joaquin’s concert Eduardo sits next to me, so beautiful. My lover Henry is sitting where I cannot see him. When we all rise for the intermission, Allendy stands in the aisle. Our eyes meet. There is sadness in them, a seriousness, which moves me. As I walk about with feline movements I know I am seducing Allendy and Eduardo and Henry and others. There is a fiery, handsome Italian violinist. There is my father, who changes his seat to place himself in front of me. There is a Spanish painter. One layer of physical confidence, one layer of timid seductiveness, one layer of childish despair, because Mother made such a scene when she saw Father arriving at the concert. And poor Joaquin was upset and nervous, but he played superbly. Henry was intimidated by the crowd. I pressed his hand very hard. He seemed strange and distant. I faced my father with a statuelike poise. I felt the child in me still frightened. Allendy towered over the crowd. I wanted to walk up to him, as in the dream, and stand by his side. Would he give me strength? No. He himself has sometimes weakened. Everybody has his timidities, his self-doubts. I carry layers of feelings, sensations. The heavy lamé on my naked body. The caress of the velvet cape. The weight of the full sleeves. The hypnotic glow of the lights. I am aware of my trailing walk, of hands shaking mine. Eduardo is drugged. With my words, my perfume (Narcisse Noir). When he met Henry, he drew himself up, proud, beautiful. In the car his leg seeks mine. Joaquin covers me with his cape. As I enter the Café du Rond Point everybody looks at me. I see I have fooled them. I have concealed the smaller me. Hugo is paternal, protective. He pays for the champagne. I am longing for Henry, who could scatter all the layers stifling me, break open the oyster hypnotized with her fear of the world. I said to Henry, “You have known much passion, but you have never known closeness, intimacy with a woman, understanding.” “That’s so true,” he said. “Woman for me was an enemy, a destroyer, one who would take things from me, not one whom I could live with closely, be happy with.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Naturally I enquired about the Vidals; but no one seemed to have heard of them and though I did my best, the weeks passed without my finding a trace of them. I wrote, however, to the address Gloria had given me before leaving Chicago so that I might be able to forward any letters; but I had left Texas before I heard from her: indeed her letter reached me in the Fremont House when I got back to Chicago. She simply told me that they had crossed the Rio Grande and had settled in their hacienda on the other side, where perhaps, she added coyly, I would pay them a visit some day. I wrote thanking her and assuring her that her memory transfigured the world for me—which was the bare truth: I took infinite pains to put this letter into good Spanish though I fear that in spite of Bob’s assistance it had a dozen faults. But I’m outrunning my story. Rapidly the herd was got together. Early in July we started northwards driving before us some 6000 head of cattle which certainly hadn’t cost five thousand dollars. That first year everything went well with us; we only saw small bands of Plain Indians and we were too strong for them. The Boss had allowed me to bring 500 head of cattle on my own account: he wished to reward me, he said, for my incessant hard work; but I was sure it was Reece and Dell who put the idea into his head.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  For the first week or so, Reece and the Boss were out all day buying cattle; Reece would generally take Charlie and Jack Freeman, young Americans, to drive his purchases home to the big corral; while the Boss called indifferently first on one and then on another to help him. Charlie was the first to lay off: he had caught a venereal disease, the very first night and had to lie up for more than a month. One after the other, all the younger men fell to the same plague. I went into the nearest town and consulted doctors and did what I could for them; but the cure was often slow for they would drink now and again to drown care and several in this way, made the disease chronic. I could never understand the temptation; to get drunk was bad enough; but in that state to go with some dirty Greaser woman, or half-breed prostitute was incomprehensible to me. Naturally I enquired about the Vidals; but no one seemed to have heard of them and though I did my best, the weeks passed without my finding a trace of them. I wrote, however, to the address Gloria had given me before leaving Chicago so that I might be able to forward any letters; but I had left Texas before I heard from her: indeed her letter reached me in the Fremont House when I got back to Chicago. She simply told me that they had crossed the Rio Grande and had settled in their hacienda on the other side, where perhaps, she added coyly, I would pay them a visit some day. I wrote thanking her and assuring her that her memory transfigured the world for me—which was the bare truth: I took infinite pains to put this letter into good Spanish though I fear that in spite of Bob’s assistance it had a dozen faults. But I’m outrunning my story. Rapidly the herd was got together. Early in July we started northwards driving before us some 6000 head of cattle which certainly hadn’t cost five thousand dollars. That first year everything went well with us; we only saw small bands of Plain Indians and we were too strong for them. The Boss had allowed me to bring 500 head of cattle on my own account: he wished to reward me, he said, for my incessant hard work; but I was sure it was Reece and Dell who put the idea into his head. The fact that some of the cattle were mine made me a most watchful and indefatigable herdsman.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 15: Further, that which is seen through a medium is not seen in its essence. Now God will be seen in heaven through a medium which is the light of glory, according to Ps. 35:10, “In Thy light we shall see light.” Therefore He will not be seen in His essence. Objection 16: Further, in heaven God will be seen face to face, according to 1 Cor. 13:12. Now when we see a man face to face, we see him through his likeness. Therefore in heaven God will be seen through His likeness, and consequently not in His essence. On the contrary, It is written (1 Cor. 13:12): “We see now through a glass in a dark manner, but then face to face.” Now that which is seen face to face is seen in its essence. Therefore God will be seen in His essence by the saints in heaven. Further, it is written (1 Jn. 3:2): “When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” Therefore we shall see Him in His essence. Further, a gloss on 1 Cor. 15:24, “When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father,” says: “Where,” i.e. in heaven, “the essence of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost shall be seen: this is given to the clean of heart alone and is the highest bliss.” Therefore the blessed will see God in His essence. Further, it is written (Jn. 14:21): “He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father; and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” Now that which is manifested is seen in its essence. Therefore God will be seen in His essence by the saints in heaven. Further, Gregory commenting (Moral. xviii) on the words of Ex. 33:20, “Man shall not see Me and live,” disapproves of the opinion of those who said that “in this abode of bliss God can be seen in His glory but not in His nature; for His glory differs not from His nature.” But His nature is His essence. Therefore He will be seen in His essence. Further, the desire of the saints cannot be altogether frustrated. Now the common desire of the saints is to see God in His essence, according to Ex. 33:13, “Show me Thy glory”; Ps. 79:20, “Show Thy face and we shall be saved”; and Jn. 14:8, “Show us the Father and it is enough for us.” Therefore the saints will see God in His essence.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  see that you regard me as a stranger, since you conceal your secrets from me as if I was an alien. You have confided to me many important secrets, and have never known that I divulged a tittle of them. You have had such proof that I have no will but yours, that you ought not to doubt but that I am more you than myself. If you have sworn never to tell any one the gentleman's secret, you do not violate your oath in telling it to me, for I neither am nor can be other than yourself. I have you in my heart ; I hold you between my arms ; I have a child in my womb in whom you live ; yet I cannot have your love as you have mine. The more faithful I am to you, the more cruel and austere you are to me. This makes me long a thousand times for the day when a sudden death may deliver your child from such a father, and me from such a spouse. I hope it will soon come, smce you prefer a faithless servant to your wife, to the mother of a child which is your own, and which is on the point of perishing because you will not tell me what I have the greatest longing to know." So saying, she embraced and kissed her husband, watering his face with her tears, and sobbing and crying so violently that the poor prince, fearing he should lose both mother and child, resolved to tell her the truth ; but he swore that if ever she mentioned it to any one m the world she should die by no hand but his own. She accepted the condition ; and then the poor abused duke told her all he had seen from beginning to end. She pretended to be satisfied, but in her heart it was quite otherwise. However, as she was afraid of the duke, she dissembled her passion as well as she could. The duke, holding his court on a great feast day, had called to it all the ladies of the country, his niece among the rest. After the banquet the dances began, and every Sevittth day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 535 one did his devoir ; but the duchess was too much vexed by the sight of her niece's beauty and grace to enjoy herself, or hide her spleen. Making all the ladies sit down, she turned the conversation on love ; but seeing that Madame du Verger said not a word, she said to her, with a heart rankling with jealousy, "And you, fair niece, is it possible that your beauty is without a lover ?" " Madam," replied the Lady du Verger, " my beauty has not yet produced that effect ; for since my hus- band's death I have had no lovers but his children ; nor do I desire any others."

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I can only distinguish One thread within running hours You . . . flowing through selves Toward you. Spring III Spring is the harshest Blurring the lines of choice Until summer flesh Swallows up all decision. I remember after the harvest was over When the thick sheaves were gone And the bones of the gaunt trees Uncovered How the dying of autumn was too easy To solve our loving. To a Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On He, through the eyes of the first marauder Saw her, catch of bright thunder, heaping Tea and bread for her guardian dead Crunching the nut-dry words they said And (thinking the bones were sleeping) He broke through the muffled afternoon Calling an end to their ritual’s tune With lightning-like disorder: Leave the bones, Love! Come away From these summer breads with the flavour of hay— Your guards can watch the shards of our catch Warming our bones on some winter’s day! Like an ocean of straws the old bones rose Fearing the lightning’s second death. There was little time to wonder At the silence of bright thunder As, with a smile of pity and stealth She buttered fresh scones for her guardian bones And they trampled him into the earth. Father Son and Holy Ghost I have not ever seen my fathers grave. Not that his judgment eyes have been forgotten Nor his great hands print On our evening doorknobs One half turn each night and he would come Misty from the worlds business Massive and silent as the whole day’s wish, ready To re-define each of our shapes— But that now the evening doorknobs Wait, and do not recognize us as we pass. Each week a different woman Regular as his one quick glass each evening— Pulls up the grass his stillness grows Calling it weed. Each week A different woman has my mother’s face And he, who time has Changeless Must be amazed, who knew and loved but one. My father died in silence, loving creation And well-defined response. He lived still judgments on familiar things And died, knowing a January fifteenth that year me. Lest I go into dust I have not ever seen my father’s grave. Generation How the young attempt and are broken Differs from age to age We were brown free girls Love singing beneath their skin Sun in their hair in their eyes Sun their fortune The taste of their young boys’ manhood Swelling like birds in their mouths. In a careless season of power We wept out our terrible promise Now these are the children we try For temptations that wear our face And who came back from the latched cities of falsehood Warning—the road to Nowhere is slippery with our blood Warning—You need not drink the river to get home For we purchased bridges with our mothers’ bloody gold We are more than kin who come to share Not blood, but the bloodiness of failure.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  184 James Baldwin dripping and bursting and beautiful and terri- ble, as you have no idea of my life now. But I think I would have been happier there and I would not have minded your smiles. I would have had my life. I have lain here many nights, waiting for you to come home, and thought how far away is my village and how terrible it is to be in this cold city, among people whom I hate, where it is cold and wet and never dry and hot as it was there, and where Giovanni has no one to talk to, and no one to be with, and where he has found a lover who is neither man nor wom- an, nothing that I can know or touch. You do not know, do you, what it is like to he awake at night and wait for someone to come home? But I am sure you do not know. You do not know anything. You do not know any of the terrible things— that is why you smile and dance the way you do and you think that the comedy you are playing with the short-haired, moon-faced Uttle girl is love.' He dropped the cigarette to the floor, where it lay burning faintly. He began to cry again. I looked at the room, thinking: I cannot bear it. 1 left my village one wild, sweet day. I will never forget that day. It was the day of my death—I wish it had been the day of my death. I remember the sun was hot and scratchy on the back of my neck as I walked the road away from my village and the road went upward and I walked bent over. I remember everything, the brown dust at my feet, and the little pebbles which rushed before me, and the short trees —